Satya - Man on a Mission

This an ode to a giant of the maidaan cricket show. Satya is a visionary and leader and lets others shine under his tutelage. 

The below is a very beautifully crafted piece by the one and only Chaitanya about what Satya truly means. 

Satya with fans on his birthday

Hunger Game

Another summer morning at the maidaan - hot, dusty, punishing. Some may have been thankful that it was an unofficial game. Vikings, a few players short, ended up with the services of Dhruv. Teams looked balanced, people turned up on time (more or less) and the first ball was bowled before 8:15.

On another day Vik's brilliance in the field (getting 2 runouts) and with the ball (2 more wickets) might have been the highlight of the game.  In fact, he threatened to turn the game into a no-contest within the first 5 overs. On another day. But it was not today. 

Maidaan has always been an arena where individual brilliance has turned the tide in many a game. The skill on display on most days is staggering. But today was not one of those days. There is something to be said about greatness that makes skill a secondary concern. All the greats of the game have that one quality that supersedes skill - hunger. At the highest levels of the game, the will to not give up is the only thing that matters because skill is a given.

Satya's skill has always been a given. Today he turned up hunger a few notches. He single-handedly dragged his team to a competitive total, backed that up with a fiery spell and to top it off threw down the stumps from covers to catch Aashish short. 

I wish there were cameras recording the game today, so that everyone could see what I saw standing at short mid-wicket. A close up of Satya's face would have told a story that this article can't even begin to do justice to. It was a picture of pure, bloody-minded grit. 

One might be tempted to disregard today's heroics, especially those that ended on the losing side. One might say the stakes were low. But stakes are what one makes them to be. That there were others who did not value today's game as highly as Satya did is a blot on their commitment and does not take anything away from Satya's heroics today. 

There were other footnotes to today's story, not least of which was CP's brilliance in the field. But today was a day for hunger - one man's above all else and I for one take my hat off to the relentless machine that is Satya.