Thursday, May 14, 2020

Lessons Others Taught Me 7 - ML Jaisimha (There's Always Tomorrow)

I consider ML Jaisimha my mentor in all things cricket - which pretty much means most things in life. He influenced me a lot just by being the way he was as he was my skipper when I was just a 15 year old lad out of school and was playing out of my league for Marredpally Cricket Club in 1983. I continued playing for MCC for almost 20 years after that.

I mentioned all the lessons he taught me when I contributed to his biography 'My way' but here I'll share the first one here. This incident happened when I was dropped from the Ranji squad and didn't know what to do. I had changed my team from MCC - MLJs team - and was playing for Osmania which was a suicidal move. The season was not going too well either and I had no one to talk to. I heard that MCC had a game on the campus so I went to say hello to my old teammates. I met uncle Jai just as he was leaving the ground.

I must have looked morose enough for him to look kindly at me and say - 'Life's not about yesterday and today Harry. There's always a tomorrow.' And then with a smile, he was off.

At that time I didn't understand what he meant and told him as well that I hoped to understand what he told me and to practice it. I believe uncle was telling me not to mope about and work for tomorrow.

Great piece of advice. Never used it for cricket though. But I know very well that I can change the tomorrow with what I do today.

Thanks Uncle!

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