As the month of September and the 3rd quarter of 2012 draws to an end, I am in the process of taking a stock of things that happened or did not happen in the Blue Caramel universe during this period. Today being a Sunday, I also indulged in some serious book reading and also scanned through the newspapers of the last few days and came upon a movie review of "Fire in Babylon", a documentary film that documents the rise of the West Indian Cricket Team from novices to legendary world beaters. The journey of the incredible rise started when the team members all fought together for the "Pride" of the team and their respective countries.
The West Indies Cricket team for long was a favorite whipping boy of the cricket playing nations. The team was also subjected to racial taunts and discrimination. There were times when they were verbally abused on the cricketing grounds itself with chants like "Go back to the trees again". Then something happened. The late 1960s saw the West Indian cricketers fight back. They started retaliating in pure cricketing terms to cricketing power houses like England and Australia. The submissiveness that they showed to theses countries especially the old "masters", colonial England gradually gave way to a certain level of cricketing aggression.
They started not taking things lying down. The genesis of this feeling was a sense of "Pride" which all the West Indian cricketers of that era started feeling for themselves and their team. This feeling catapulted them to "Invincible" levels, when during the 1970s, other teams shuddered at the very thought of playing against the Clive Lloyd captained West Indian cricket team.
The lessons that all Blue Caramelers should learn from this is that for every difficult situation in life, there are two types of people available- 1) The Trier and 2) The Crier. It would have been very easy for the West India team to have cried hoarse about the injustices (both actual as well as perceived) melted out to them and try to garner sympathy of the others. But as true champions instead of "Cry" they worked hard on the option of "Try". They focused on the job at hand with a renewed sense of pride and commitment and succeeded in shutting up the critics and their detractors with their performance on the field.
In the last 3 months, there have been cases of individuals in Blue Caramel highlighting both the "Try" as well as the "Cry" phenomenon. Triers are champions, they will always have the backing of all. But for the criers, who would like to have a cry baby tagging along forever??
The West Indies Cricket team for long was a favorite whipping boy of the cricket playing nations. The team was also subjected to racial taunts and discrimination. There were times when they were verbally abused on the cricketing grounds itself with chants like "Go back to the trees again". Then something happened. The late 1960s saw the West Indian cricketers fight back. They started retaliating in pure cricketing terms to cricketing power houses like England and Australia. The submissiveness that they showed to theses countries especially the old "masters", colonial England gradually gave way to a certain level of cricketing aggression.
They started not taking things lying down. The genesis of this feeling was a sense of "Pride" which all the West Indian cricketers of that era started feeling for themselves and their team. This feeling catapulted them to "Invincible" levels, when during the 1970s, other teams shuddered at the very thought of playing against the Clive Lloyd captained West Indian cricket team.
The lessons that all Blue Caramelers should learn from this is that for every difficult situation in life, there are two types of people available- 1) The Trier and 2) The Crier. It would have been very easy for the West India team to have cried hoarse about the injustices (both actual as well as perceived) melted out to them and try to garner sympathy of the others. But as true champions instead of "Cry" they worked hard on the option of "Try". They focused on the job at hand with a renewed sense of pride and commitment and succeeded in shutting up the critics and their detractors with their performance on the field.
In the last 3 months, there have been cases of individuals in Blue Caramel highlighting both the "Try" as well as the "Cry" phenomenon. Triers are champions, they will always have the backing of all. But for the criers, who would like to have a cry baby tagging along forever??
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