EYE OF THE TIGER

Don’t lose your grip on the dreams of the past
You must fight just to keep them alive...
– from the song ‘Eye of the Tiger’ (film Rocky III)

Having played cricket at the club level, my father had a fondness for narrating accounts of exploits of various players. One such story was about Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi. Though Tiger, as he was popularly known, passed away last week, his legend lives on... not just, for what he achieved, but also for the manner in which he did it.

At the age of 20, just six months before he got selected to play for his country, a car accident left him with a severely impaired right eye. However, there was no stopping him as a batsman who relished scoring at a brisk pace and hooking the fast pacers and stepping out against the spinners. Tiger lost his eye but did not lose sight of his ambition.

After losing his eye, even pouring water into a glass was a challenging task and one can well imagine the complexity in judging the motion of the cricket ball. And as India’s youngest captain to date, he had to not only justify his own place in the side, but also win over the respect of his team mates. His statistics may not appear dazzling, either personally or as captain, but they mean little when taken into context.

Pataudi changed the face of Indian cricket with his mindset. My father believed that the can-do belief that future teams displayed has its roots in Tiger’s fighting instinct ... To be better at surviving the worst of subversions in our life, we must not allow dreams to die... rather look ahead like Tiger did with a single eye!

Tiger has shown that if we happen to lose a crucial eye
Let’s BE BETTER at ensuring that dreams do not die!

- Pravin K. Sabnis