GAUTAM GAMBHIR Cricketer ON learning from every defeat

GAUTAM GAMBHIR

Cricketer ON learning from every defeat

From page 1 ple of different mindsets. Some players like Munaf Patel or our KKR coach Vijay Dahiya have strange but interesting way of looking at tight situations. Once you listen to how they summarise the situation, it’s amazing. At the workplace, you need people who are good stress-absorbers.

And you can’t ignore clear, clever and consistent practice. There is no shortcut to the top. Virender Sehwag and Yuvraj Singh are one of the most talented cricketers but they don’t just turn up at and hit those sixes. They work bloody hard. When practising, even Sachin Tendulkar is always working on a specific area – his stance, backlift or just leaving a lot of balls outside the offstump. Most failures can be avoided by good practice. At the very least, it makes you confident that you have prepared well. I flunked in Class X. It was terrible. I was quite a dude because of cricket and all of a sudden, the bubble burst. That’s when my mom told me that it is not how you start but how you finish. It was my first big lesson: one failure doesn’t mean that the game is over; it is just a point lost. And none of the failures means it is The End, it is a learning curve. God has his way of developing an individual and I feel failure is part of the process.
I cannot emphasise enough the importance of different characters in a team game. You have to have people of different mindsets.