3 Ways Sports Changed the Meaning of Success for Me

We humans love to win against all odds because success for us is a great story — unaware that stories can be written, and they can also be rewritten.

I was 15 when I played the most important game of my life.

2003, Mumbai — National Qualifiers.

The winning team would go for the Commonwealth Games to be held in Manchester, England.

It was a Table Tennis game. I was the captain of my team and had to play two games.

There were three players on each team and the top two players of each team played each other while the third player of one team played one game with the third player of another team.

We came from a small town and were far from home while our rival team was filled with three national-level players — their families had flown down to watch this game.

We were at 2–2 and the final game was between their captain and me. The top two players of the rival team were siblings.

After losing the last game to me, the other sibling was in tears because I had thrashed him 4–0 in a best-of-seven match with scores like 4–11, 8–11, 2–11, and 6–11.

I don’t take the credit for that game as I was experiencing some transcendent energy at that time and I still don’t remember playing that game (just remember the game in flashes).

His brother was nervous about getting on the court with me.

My team was excited and almost overconfident that I was going to beat this guy because of the way I played the previous match.

But no one knew I had lost the transcendent flow as if Superman suddenly became Clarke Kent and had no idea how to be Superman again.

The game began.

What Does It Mean To You?

Virat Kohli is one of my favorite cricketers and one of the greatest athletes of this generation.

Every single time he steps on the ground, the people in my country expect nothing less than a century (100 runs) from him.

That’s quite a high bar for anyone playing the game but people believe that it’s just another day at the office for Virat.

But what does he believe? What is he thinking when he steps out on the ground to play?

Virat shared this in an interview.

It’s a spiritual perspective. For him, it’s not the century — that’s not why he walks into the ground to bat.

Sure, at the surface level, he wants to win the match for India.

But some processes need to be followed, some conditions need to be respected.

For every series, every match — Virat Kohli intends to overcome something — a skill that he needs to work on, a challenge that he wants to embrace, taking over a bowler who has troubled him in the past, etc.

One of the interesting challenges that he spoke about when he scored a century in Australia was something that gave me a peek inside his beautiful mind.

Back in 2018/19, India was going to play 2nd Test match against Australia in Perth.

Now, Perth is popular for bouncy pitches, and historically, Indian batters don’t do well over there because the batting style of Indian batsmen suits slow, low-bounce wickets that support their natural game of pushing the ball straight down the ground.

Now, to overcome this, Virat decided that he was not going to play straight down the ground unless the ball was too full pitching near his bat.

He removed three shots from his arsenal before getting out on the ground.

He still ended up hitting a century.

Now, success here is not the century — sure, it’s great to hit a century but that was a by-product of his restraint, his control over himself where he pushed himself to not play his favorite shots.

Success, in that game, meant hitting a century without playing a few of his favorite shots, overcoming the urge of that dopamine hit that he’d get playing the shots that made him who he was, placing a challenge like this in front of a heavyweight bowling attack and overcoming it.

The entire world celebrated his century, but Virat, was able to make one without those shots — he was celebrating overcoming that challenge.

This kind of success is more internalized than what seems from the outside.

What Does It Mean To the World?

Sports is a perfect place to define success because it’s constantly pushing the boundaries of what humans can achieve.

Something that seemed impossible in the 80s seems like an everyday thing in today’s times.

Every once in a while, we see something happening in sports that pushes the envelope of possibility.

For me, sports have always been instrumental in redefining success.

The purpose of sports is to change beliefs, subvert expectations, and share an “Anything is Possible” narrative with the world.

And the longer the sporting event, the more lifelike it feels.

Contrary to popular belief, that T-20 cricket has taken the world by storm, for me, test cricket was and will always be the purest form of cricket.

Imagine two teams in one game against each other for five days and there’s a possibility that there would be no result at the end of the fifth day.

Such is life… Oh, oops! Such is Test cricket.

Test cricket doesn’t mean a lot to a lot of viewers/ people in the world. But if you see the greatest cricketers — test cricket is where they feel most alive and give their everything.

It’s the test of all their abilities — mental, physical, and emotional skills as a cricketer.

Imagine a team giving their everything, only to lose on the fifth day.

But that’s what makes a robust cricketer. That’s what raises the quality of the game we get to witness.

What the world believes is that it’s the most boring form of cricket.

But if you’re a cricketer, this is the form that you want to be great at because test cricket makes you a complete cricketer.

The point is, sometimes, it doesn’t matter what success means to the world.

What matters is how far you can test your skills and how far you can go with pushing the limits of humanity.

There are bars of success that are defined by others and then there are bars that are created.

Create Your Own Meaning of Success

If everyone tried to achieve the same bar of success, who would raise the bar?

When Sachin Tendulkar scored the first double-century in One Day International Cricket, the idea of scoring 200 runs in one match by one person was alien, but he did it.

Before him, many reached close to 200 but were never able to get past it. Why?

Because they didn’t believe it was possible. And then, many others did it after him.

Sometimes, you need to change the way the world looks at success and raise the bar to redefine it.

But that can only happen when you create your own meaning of success.

When I played the last game of Table Tennis that day, in my mind, I had already won.

In my mind, I had already overcome the idea that the players from the small town could not beat National players.

I had already made a National player cry beating him in straight sets.

But I forgot there was another game with another National player. I lost to this other guy because my definition of success was limited.

I lost to that guy even though his feet were shivering when our game started.

I lost to him not because he was a better player.

I lost to him because I had no reason to win in that game. I lost to him because the meaning of success that I created in my mind was limited and lasted only till I ended up beating that one National player.

LAST

The reason why I used Clarke Kent's analogy for the most unforgettable Table Tennis game of my life is because before the game I was told that it was impossible to beat this team.

Before the game, people were yapping in my ears that these players play Table Tennis every single day for 8–10 hours.

They are thorough professionals.

Their exams are postponed to accommodate their practice for the professional tournaments.

We have no match.

We don’t belong to that league and even if we lose no one will say anything because us reaching here in itself is a huge achievement.

My only goal before playing the angriest game of my life was to overcome these limitations which were being piled on me by my teammates, and my coach.

I don’t blame them.

I understand now how mental conditioning of what a certain sport means to us can play a significant role in nurturing a sports career.

No wonder so many kids from my school left my small town when they wanted to pursue something bigger in life because that town just became too small for them.

The only limitations that we possess are the ones we accept.

We accept the limitations we think we deserve.

And one of the biggest limitations that you can put upon yourself is the way you define success in your mind.

Some words are elastic because they are not just words, they are ideas, like — Love, Family, Success, Failure, etc.

Do not limit them by defining them. Rather be open to redefining them.

These words are like stock markets — there’s one meaning today, but that only suggests that there’s an opportunity to create another meaning tomorrow.

What’s the meaning you’d like to give success?

Until next time,

Ciao!

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