Virat Kohli deserves credit for India’s amazing win in Australia

Team India at the Gabba with the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 

Victory at the Gabba! What an amazing win! What incredible attitude, spunk, guts and gumption!

Rishabh and Siraj celebrate

India’s amazing test series victory in Australia was achieved while India’s captain and best batsman - Virat Kohli - was away on paternity leave. So, for the past week my social media feed has been buzzing with snarky memes about how Team India is better off without superstar Kohli, or with TED talk style meditations on how “servant leaders” like Ajinkya Rahane are more effective than “alpha leaders” like Virat.

These memes are missing the point. Kohli deserves a ton of credit for this win.

Kohli’s biggest contribution to this moment was in making winning test series abroad India’s #1 priority.

In the later years of MS Dhoni’s captaincy that commitment was never clear. There was always a feeling that Dhoni’s test team were going through the motions rather than playing with belief, intent, or purpose. That sense of drift was obvious on the abysmal England tours of 2011 and 2014. It seemed obvious that MSD enjoyed limited overs cricket more than test matches. The fog never really lifted until Dhoni retired from test cricket.

At that time, it was easy to imagine that Indian cricket would become IPL-land, happy to have some T20 fun, but with no higher aspirations. With a different leader that could easily have happened.

Fortunately, Kohli never had any doubts that his ambition was to make India a great test team.

He brought in other leaders, like Ravi Shastri, who shared this vision. He committed to the workload of playing more tests, to the more arduous scheduling, to the fitness culture needed to maintain a pack of 8-10 genuine quick bowlers who could bowl with intensity after an entire day’s play in any conditions. Kohli prepped India's test team with away-wins in Sri Lanka and the West Indies, with home wins against New Zealand, South Africa England and Australia before setting out to conquer the final frontier – away wins in the SENA nations.

That prize almost eluded him. With a bit of luck India could have won in South Africa in 2017-18. We lost chasing fourth inning targets of 208 in Cape Town and 287 Pretoria. With a bit more luck India could have won in England in 2018. We lost chasing fourth inning targets of 195 in Birmingham and 245 in Southampton. Compare that with the 328 we hunted down against a better attack in Brisbane.

Mother Cricket finally smiled down on Kohli’s team when India finally beat Australia in Australia in 2018-19 for the first time in history. Captain Kohli’s noble quest hadn’t been in vain. The final frontier had been conquered.

If India had the resources to win again in Australia in 2020-21, it is in significant part because of Kohli’s legacy. There is nothing inevitable about having a team of young test players with the chutzpah to beat the Aussies in Australia. Kohli’s ambition, faith and patient team building set this win up.

The point is not to take anything away from the rest of the leadership group.

Most great achievements have many fathers. Rahane’s calm, Shastri’s mental toughness, even Bharat Arun’s tactical nous all contributed to this glorious moment. But leadership is about more than being the khadoos Maratha rock the rest of the team bat around, it is about more than being calm presence in the dressing room, it is more than making the smart field placings. Leadership is also about having a vision for what we will achieve together and having the resourcefulness and patience to develop a team to deliver on that vision. To that extent the leader who gave us the joy of Brisbane 2021 is the nappy-changing daddy Kohli.

Let there be no doubt that Virat has fire in his belly...

...even if he does have a softer side.

Note: I was surfing the web for pictures of Virat and Anushka with the daughter, who was born on the day India saved the Sydney test. The photos on the net right now are all stock images or fakes.

Zen and the Art of Driving from Mumbai to Goa

Planning a trip from Mumbai to Goa? Drive. It’s more satisfying than flying.

Our family drove from Mumbai to Goa and back last week. It’s a long drive - about twelve hours each way. It was worth the effort because Goa looked so much more beautiful on this trip than on the many earlier trips when I’d just taken a flight into Dabolim.

Why?

Robert Pirsig explained this effect in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

“To arrive in the Rocky Mountains by plane would be to see them in one kind of context, as pretty scenery. But to arrive after days of hard travel across the prairies would be to see them in another way, as a promised land.”

Similarly, to get off a flight, pick up stuff from the baggage carousel, find the coach sent by the beach resort, and then notice the pretty sunset while sipping a welcome drink is one kind of experience.

To leave home early in the morning, drive on to the Eastern Freeway overlooking Mazgaon docks, across the Vashi bridge from Bombay island to the Indian mainland, through the concrete jungle of Navi Mumbai, and then to zigzag up Bhor ghat to Lonavla, spot Duke’s Nose across the range in Khandala, trundle through the anonymous urban sprawl of Pune and then past acres of sugarcane fields in Satara, the railway bridges across the Krishna and Koyna rivers, the brick kilns at Karad, the movie studio signs in Kolhapur, and to then cross the border into Karnataka, zigzag back down to the plains through the waterfalls of Amboli ghat, drive through the buffer zone of the Radhanagari National Park while troops of monkeys bound across the road, get lost on a kuccha road, meet young water buffalos who won’t give way to a car, discover an unexpectedly lovely temple tank at Sawantwadi, reconnect with National Highway system and discover that NH66 is still a kuccha road because of construction work, get off the highway to drive through banyan tree canyons to get to our villa just before dark, and to then notice the sunset on the water while swigging a welcome drink; that is a totally different kind of experience. Goa does objectively look so much more beautiful, more unique, after that experience.

Here are some pictures we took along the way:

Up Bhor Ghat towards Lonavla

On the Mumbai - Pune Expressway

Across the Koyna River

Service Road along NH48

Highway pitstop (desi-jugaad style)

Ghat roads

Ghat roads - will be a tough drive after dark

School @ Ajara

Vista @ Amboli Ghat

Down Amboli Ghat

Monkey Troop @ Amboli

Entering Sawantwadi

Sawantwadi Talao

Sawantwadi Talao

Kalash @ Sawantwadi Talao in the evening light

Next time, maybe we’ll do the scenic route through Harihareshwar and Ganpatipule. Maybe we’ll do that route on a motorcycle that we actually know how to look after, like Pirsig did in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

"You were born a daughter" - a retro Nike print ad

This post is to share the retro Nike print advertisement below. I came across these images on a blog called ShoeGirl Corner while looking for background info on Nike advertising for my last blogpost. Loved the advert.

It does feel retro.

Does anybody do eight page print spreads in glossy magazines anymore? Including an entire page that has just five words?

The feminism doesn't feel retro, though.

Women as still often seen and portrayed (and see and portray themselves) in relational terms, as mother/ daughter/ wife/ sister/ friend, as significant others. There still are feminist breakthroughs to be had in taking out that scaffolding and portraying women as individuals, as protagonists, as heroes of their own stories.

Is it retro for Nike to feature normal people, like the soccer moms and school teachers who actually pay for Nike products, rather than Wimbledon champions and Olympic gold medallists? I hope not. 

Is Nike’s Just do it the worst tagline ever? Or the best?

Just do it. By Serena Williams.

Say you were Nike’s Chief Marketing Officer. 

Say you were searching for a tagline that would define your brand. 

Just do it. By Alex Morgan.

Would you choose a line associated with good karma, with success, with victory? Or would you choose a line spoken by a notorious serial killer facing the death penalty? 

You’d choose a line associated with success, right? Or maybe not. 

Nike’s famous Just do it slogan is derived from the last words of the serial killer Gary Gilmore.

The story is that the unrepentant serial killer was facing a firing squad and was asked if he had any last words. He said, “Let’s do it”. 

Dan Weiden, the head of the ad agency handling the Nike account, took Gilmore’s words and changed “Let’s do it” to "Just do it". The rest is history. Just do it remains one of the most powerful and successful marketing campaigns ever. 

To be fair, "Just do it" is not really comparable to my previous post about VW Phaeton. “Let’s do it” and “Just do it” could be general purpose English words in a way that Phaeton clearly is not. But the interesting point, the counter-point to the VW Phaeton story, is that good ideas need not originate from sources with good karma.

Let's do it. By Gary Gilmore.
On his way to being executed.

Was VW Phaeton the worst brand name ever?

A VW Pheaton rolling out of its "Transparent Factory"

Say you were a big company’s Chief Marketing Officer. 

Say you were searching for a brand name for your new super-premium flagship product. 

Would you choose a name associated with good karma, with success, with victory? Or would you name your product after one of history’s most notorious losers? 

You’d choose a name associated with success, right? Or maybe not. 

Back in 2002, Volkswagen chose to name their flagship luxury car the Phaeton. 

The Phaeton was the most premium car in VW’s history, a luxury sedan positioned alongside the Mercedes S class range, priced at over USD 100,000 in today's money. 

The German engineering worked. By most contemporary accounts the car was superb, with a Lamborghini class engine, with refined road-handling, fully loaded with features like passenger-specific climate control. It was made in VW’s famous Transparent Factory in Dresden, where customers could visit the shop-floor and watch their cars being assembled.

Yet, despite the superb product, the Phaeton was a commercial disaster. Production had to be stopped in 2014. 

VW Phaeton’s story follows the same narrative arc as that of the mythological Phaeton, the demi-god the car was named after.

The original Phaeton was born to Apollo and a water-nymph Clymene. 

In those days, the sun rode around the heavens in Apollo’s chariot, drawn by four white horses, guided by the charioteer Helios. 

Phaeton had not trained as a charioteer. But the teenager ignored his own unreadiness, took advantage of an unwise divine promise and took control of his father’s sun-chariot. Unable to control the sun-chariot’s incredible power he steered it too close to the earth (therefore scorching the Sahara), he then overcompensated and steered too far away from the earth (therefore freezing the tundra). At this point he panicked and was plunging the sun towards Greece itself. Zeus had no choice but to throw a thunderbolt at his grandson to strike Phaeton dead. Zeus had his duties. He had to save the planet.

So, why did Volkswagen’s Phaeton fail? 

Like all big events this failure doesn’t have a single cause. But let’s not rule out the possibility that Volkswagen invited Zeus’ wrath by invoking Phaeton’s name. 

Maybe the Chief Marketing Officer would have been better off choosing a classical sounding name that Zeus didn’t have strong feelings about, like Lexus or Acura.

Phaeton the unready charioteer plunging toward the earth

_________________________________________________

P.S. This blogpost was triggered by reading the chapter about Phaeton in Mythos, Stephen Fry's excellent retelling of the Greek epics.

Atal Behari Vajpayee, please meet Cliff Richard: a fellow bachelor boy from Lucknow

Vajpayee mural in Lucknow

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was unquestionably one of Lucknow’s greatest citizens. 

Vajpayee was a freedom fighter, poet, orator, and diplomat. The late Prime Minister represented Lucknow with distinction in the Lok Sabha for three decades. He was a statesman who could work for peace with Pakistan even while decisively defeating them on the Kargil battlefield. His term as India’s Prime Minister is still remembered as a time of unprecedented progress and prosperity. 

Lucknow is justly proud of Bharat Ratna Atal Behari. 

The City of Lucknow honoured him with a giant mural.

The City of Lucknow also honoured Sir Cliff Richard with a similar mural.

Cliff Richard mural in Lucknow

While Sir Cliff is not generally associated with Lucknavi tehzeeb, he was born at King George’s hospital in Lucknow. His Anglo-Indian parents worked for the colonial Indian Railways. They were based in Dehra Dun at the time. They came down to Lucknow for looking for better maternity care. Cliff Richard's family later moved to Calcutta and emigrated to the UK in 1948, when Cliff was eight years old. 

So, what do Cliff Richard and Atal Behari Vajpayee have in common? If their murals were to come to life, would they find anything to talk about?

Maybe they could talk about being bachelor boys. 

One of Sir Cliff's greatest hits is "Bachelor Boy". The song goes: 

“Son, you are a bachelor Boy

And that’s the way to stay

Son, you’ll be a bachelor boy

Until your dying day.”

Sir Cliff, being a man of integrity, lived by his own advice. He dated many charming ladies, including Sue Barker a tennis player and former French Open singles champion. But he has remained a bachelor (at least until his eightieth birthday).

Atalji was a bachelor too. 

The way Vajpayee put it "main kunwar hoon par brahmachari nahin" (I'm single but not celibate). 

Sir Cliff might relate. They might just have something to talk about. 

Though I doubt if even Sir Cliff’s persuasion could get Atalji to do the dance steps from the Bachelor Boy video (click here to watch). Those immortal moves can belong to one and only one of the Lakhnavi bachelor boys.

Summer Holiday - the album featuring Bachelor Boy

Did Don McLean anticipate the 2020 Biden-Trump election?

I was reflecting on the weirdness of Donald Trump refusing to concede to Joe Biden and the words that came to mind, unbidden, were:

“The players tried to take the field 

the marching band refused to yield…”

From Don McLean’s American Pie.

Could Don McLean have foreseen this moment fifty years ago? 

Sort of like Nostradamus foresaw moments in the future? I’m only half kidding. 

American Pie is so different from, and so much better than, the rest of Don McLean’s work that it is easy to imagine that the song was written by a higher force that just expressed itself through Don McLean when he was in an altered mind-state, sort of like the state Samuel Taylor Coleridge was in when he wrote Kubla Khan.