There is a perception in the industry that, unless signed and sealed, deals done during the week should never be celebrated over the weekend. Anything can happen over the weekend to put twists in the deal. Sometimes, those can also be deal-breakers!

Watching the ICC World Cup Finals, this thought kept coming. Due to the clean sweep throughout the journey, India got into the game as the clear favorite. But the final match was of a different sort. The dominance of Indian batting was curtailed by clever Australian bowlers who took advantage of the conditions and seemed to have come into the game with thorough learnings on the strengths and weaknesses of Indian players. This is reflected in how they got Surya Kumar Jadav out by enticing him with slow bouncers while keeping two at fine leg and third man. It was just a matter of time before SKY did not connect properly and got caught by the two or the wicketkeeper!

One may argue that in a tournament where every team has played against each other in the round-robin stage, having a separate knockout stage is unfair. But I will not get into that argument. The tournament rules were made and agreed upon by all teams and are not up for debate just because the ultimate result was not as per our wishes.

What amazed me the most was the temperament of the Australian team. Despite losing the first two matches, they kept faith in themselves and marched strong into the knock-out stage. They never seemed to stop believing they could win the World Cup. Apart from their skills and years of practice, this faith got them through. 

Not only in cricket but in every aspect of life, nothing is over until it is completely over. There can always be some events, some favorable twists, that will drastically change the course and bring an expected negative outcome to a positive. There will be situations when the ball just touches the edge of the bat and misses it by a whisker on the other. Call it luck, destiny, or just probability; it will keep happening and there is no reason to lose hope before the stakes are completely lost or be overconfident before the battle is completely won.

What can be the best way to describe this than the five mass extinctions our Earth has faced over the 500 million years that life has been on this planet? In each of the extinctions, 75-95% of the living creatures have been wiped off from the face of the Earth, but the very fact that we sit today debating the onset of the Holocene Extinction proves that the 5% who got saved were enough to reconstruct the entire animal and plant kingdoms. (For those unaware of the previous extinctions and the sixth one we face, I shall share more details on my next blogs).

Why, then, should we lose hope halfway down the path?