M A I N   N E W S

Change of attitude will be sweet music to ears

The Indian cricket team losing three consecutive Tests and with it their number one ranking was bad enough. Then came the news that my hero Shammi Kapoor had lost his battle with life. It really has been quite a traumatic last few days and when it is going to get better, God only knows.

Shammiji was extremely keen on cricket like all the Kapoor men and he was known to sit in his car and watch my club Dadar Union play their matches. This was of course before I became a member of that wonderful club but just to find out that he was a mad cricket fan made me an even bigger fan of his.

I can reel off all his films and all his songs, for it was his songs and the way he moved to those foot-tapping numbers which was most uplifting and busted nervousness and tension like nothing else. You could be playing the ferocious West Indies attack the next day, but if you went to sleep listening to some of the songs and then woke up to them, then you went to the ground with energy and looked forward to the battle.

The beauty was that even if you got out first ball and you listened to the songs, the disappointment didn't last long. Sure the songs were sung mostly by Mohammad Rafi, but it was the way Shammiji danced to them that was more vivid and brought the song to life and gave it an incredible zing.

We often see members of the Indian team get off their team bus listening to some music and hopefully it is music that will get them going and play to their skill level. This is not a bad Indian team. True, they have been outplayed by England in all departments of the game, but they can bounce back if they are determined to salvage their pride. It is in the determination stakes that they have been short on and the way some of the players barely took their hands out of their pockets at Birmingham did not send a good signal.

It was as if they would rather be in the dressing room than out in the middle. They seemed to forget that a champion side is one which wins in foreign conditions, for conquering them and the opposition is a thrill beyond compare.