People remember winners only!

Between the years 1983 and 2023, India’s men’s cricket team reached the last 4 and beyond in as many as 20 ICC tournaments. This includes 8 times in 50-over World Cup, out of which they won the trophy twice (1983 and 2011), finished second best twice (2003 and 2023), and bowed out in the semifinals on four occasions (1987, 1996, 2015 and 2019). In the Champions Trophy (earlier known as ICC Knockout), they won it twice (2002 – jointly with Sri Lanka, and 2013), were runners up twice (2000 and 2017), and lost in semifinals once (1998).

In T20 World Cup, India lifted the trophy twice (2007 and 2024), lost the final once (2014), and could not proceed beyond final four twice (2016 and 2022). As for the two editions of the World Test Championship (WTC), India made it to the finals on both occasions (2021 and 2023) but failed to win each time.

So out of a total of 20 attempts, India won the title only on six occasions. The other 14 occasions involved several great cricketing heroes of India, but a lot of them were not fortunate enough to be part of a major title winning campaign. And unfortunately, no matter how well they played in those tournaments, they tend to be forgotten. People remember winners only. The second best or third/fourth best is remembered with pain, but it is the winners whose names and performances remain etched in the minds of people.

This is true not only in cricket or sports, but in other domains as well. To cite an example from the corporate space, my memory takes me 9-10 years back to an incident that happened in my last organization, Netscribes. There was a client from the travel industry who was running a test across many agencies for an upcoming big project on blog writing. Netscribes had already done a blog project with the client successfully and they were extremely happy with the service. After the test run the client opted for another agency (probably due to competitive rates), but within 1 month they realized the difference in quality they were getting then and what they used to get from Netscribes earlier. They immediately discontinued working with that agency and awarded the blog project to Netscribes (which was executed successfully as well). This again shows that if you provide quality, you will be a winner, and people will remember you and come back to you again and again!

Location: Kolkata, West Bengal, India

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