Readers’ Forum

Lessons for athletes

Undaunted by five defeats in a row, Mumbai Indians (MI) continued their battle in the IPL 2015 to cruise into the final and thereby created an amazing record of perseverance and determination, and lessons for athletes and teams of all disciplines throughout the world.
Contrarily, Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) fell from the peak of the points table, losing their remaining two matches unabated to return homes for summoning back their zeal and energy for next year’s competition after self-scrutiny and self-analysis.
As cricket fans, we have identified erroneous team selection, captains’ failure as batsman, majority senior players’ impatience and irresponsibility, and over-confidence for failure of the KKR. And by this time, according to unconfirmed sources, storm of disunity and blame game has begun to brew in the KKR camp.
The success of MI and the unforeseen elimination of KKR indicate that anything can happen in sports at any time. MI’s miracle return may be compared with West Germany’s gallant come back to final after 1-8 drubbing by Hungary at the group stage of the World Cup Football 1954 in Switzerland.
We think there are lessons for Bangladesh Cricket team in the successes of MI and the failure of the KKR.

Abdullah Akber
Dhaka