The win was not fancy or flashy. When they were 3 wickets down, Ross Taylor was fairly new and tentative and Tom Latham was a new name for some fans like me. Amidst Mumbai crowd, India was on top when Hardik Pandya secured the somewhat set opener Martin Guptill.
What was remarkable from then on was that the two kiwi batsmen took the match to the opposition. They did not show heroics, did not do brute hitting nor take aerial route or unwanted doubles or triples. They:
- stuck to the basics,
- kept the strike rotating,
- treated the ball by its merit,
- swept the spinners to keep the momentum and
- ran aggressively with calculated risk.
It seemed they were focussed on staying on until the end of the innings in order to fancy their chances of winning the match, drawing inspiration from what Kohli and Karthick did in the Indian innings.
Runs started slow and they moved on to scoring at 5 runs per over. Never did the run rate seem impossible while they were batting. Though Taylor showed some signs of nervousness facing Chahal and Yadav, he settled and played an anchor's role.
Tom Latham was the surprise package, at least in my eyes. There came a kiwi southpaw wicket-keeper batsman, who is just 25 against the in-form Indian team and Mumbai crowd. He came, He saw, He conquered is a just summary of what happened today.
He started to keep the scoreboard ticking, played patiently against today's hard-hitters, swept the spinners brilliantly, kept to the basics with sound technique and showed how much temperament this youngster has and ultimately scored a brilliant century. More importantly, he saw his side through which none of them expected early on.
The line I want to draw here is that sometimes in our lives, things may not happen as we expect, there may not be short term wins, there may not be parties, no short term success or roses everywhere, but, we need to persevere and work patiently with our single-minded focus on our goal.
We should never cave in to short term results or temptations or fame for the sake of the them, rather our success and satisfaction should stem from our intrinsic values and goals we aim to achieve.
We need to enjoy not the fruits of success, but the journey taken to reach our destination.
We need to cherish the road to success more than the final destination.
This is the only way to reinforce our happiness and purpose in life on a higher zenith rather than to short lived instant gratification, which is a curse of our millenial generation.
Signing off on 23rd October, 2017 at Scandic Hotel, Kolding