Less to gain and lot to lose…
Manoj Madhavan -
Wednesday, October 15, 2008 1:08 PM
In cricket, they say you are only as good as your last inning. And when your string of bad form prolongs, you open yourself to the risk of being tolerated by the same fan who put you up on a pedestal not too long ago. Like in life, you perish if you don't perform and all the years spent carving out a career can come to a nought with just a few dismal shows. Remember the drag Kapil Dev's career had become towards the end? All of us wanted him to reach the 432 wicket milestone, but it was never coming. Even a serious talent like Javagal Srinath had to wait in the wings for almost two years so that Paaji could reach his record. Somewhere along the line then, even his most ardent fan couldn't wait any longer for Kapil to reach the record and hang his boots. Certainly not the kind of end a cricketer of Kapil's stature would have wanted.
In the process, what Kapil did in his 14 years of international cricket was forgotten and he was being ridiculed. His fans didn't mind that extended rope for him, but at the same time wanted the record to happen fast. A good match for him was something that he was anyways supposed to deliver, but a poor performance was magnified.
It's the same with our Fab 4 (Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly & Anil Kumble). They are at a stage in their careers where all past achievements are, to put it mildly, a thing of the past. And, every bad outing they have on the field only dents their reputations further. Their fans, and even critics, won't have anything short of a superlative performance from them. Fifties or two-wicket hauls are not sufficient any more. Because, that is something they are anyways expected to do. For their fans, nothing short of a match-winning performance will do. And when that is hard to come by, it is disappointment, and the accompanying criticism, all around. In other words, our heroes for all these years now have less to gain and lot to loose…