“Andy Murray’s victory in the Wimbledon final last Sunday reminded me a lot of the Indian victory in the Mumbai World Cup final.” Jigneshbhai said when we had our coffee last week.
Swami agreed. “Both Andy and the Indian team carried the heavy burden of expectations on their shoulders, albeit Andy had it more in person one would have to say.”
And then my friends went on to list all the similarities in the two wins one by one.
Jigneshbhai started with “Both the home nations were waiting for a long, long time for this win, and quite desperately, though one would have to say that 77 years is a lot more than 28 years.”
Swami responded with his trivia knowledge on sport.
“In both the games, the final scores of India 277-4 in 48.2 beat Sri Lanka 274-6 in 50 overs, and Andy beat Novak 6-4, 7-5, 6-4 suggested that it was an easy win, but did not quite reveal the extremely high quality of the game and the intensity of the competition.”
Jigneshbhai remembered that both the wins were preceded by earlier losses in the finals – though Andy had lost last year, and India had lost couple of editions earlier in 2003.
“And when the win finally happened, the crowds of both the countries truly went berserk. Even the politicians followed in both the cases – what with demands of Bharat Ratna for Sachin being matched by Knighthood recommendation for Andy.” Swami said joyfully. That was certainly truly a common factor – the hyperbole and over-reaction of emotional and patriotic crowds.
And finally, both the wins were a result of tremendous self-belief. Indeed they were. MSD in Mumbai and Andy in Wimbledon demonstrated unshakeable self-belief right from the word go that couldn’t be altered despite swinging fortunes during the game.
The old wealthy man who had been listening to our conversation of similarities from the next table came up to ours as we were leaving and said that he agreed with us. As we left, he said, “Both of them reminded me of the Iftikhar-Amitabh dialogue from Deewaar, where Iftikhar asks Amitabh: “क्या तुम सोचते हो कि ये काम तुम अकेले कर सकते हो?” And Amitabh replies: “मैं जानता हूँ मैं ये काम अकेले कर सकता हूँ”.”
That perhaps was the difference between winning and losing.