2015 March

The banner for this 125th issue of Lexspeak was chosen quite some time back……much before Saina was crowned Badminton No.1, long before the men in blue went down to the men in yellow, much before the AAP disintegrated and some crazy pilot took the young lives of others because he was depressed. Anything is possible, you see ! Of course I didn’t tell you why we chose this ‘Anything is possible’ caption. Well, read on and you will know……

I will take you down the memory lane to our 106th issue when I had written about the endurance of a young cricketer called Karun Nair (fondly called Unni). His legendary endurance came in handy as he batted for a record 14.5 hours (872 minutes) over a period of 3 days from 9th to 11th March, 2015 in the hot, humid climate of Mumbai and amassed a whopping 329 runs smashing 46 fours and 1 six. He became the highest run getter in the history of Ranji Trophy by surpassing Gul Muhammed of Baroda who had scored 319 against Holkar. He had broken a 67 year old record. Batting for such long periods of time does require grit and determination of the highest level. He portrayed amazing maturity for his age and out batted the opponents single handedly. He was adjudged the man of the match for his brilliant knock. Having been through a lean season before, one can imagine the pressure that he must have been under. Surprisingly, he showed a cool head and controlled his emotions. He was calm and composed all through which is something that all of us can learn. Anything is possible, you see……………provided you are determined to get it and keep a cool head while you are at it.

As professionals we can a take leaf out of this gritty piece, especially as we are grappling with the financial year end closures, tax deadlines, myriad MCA notifications and weird regulatory turnarounds in the name of clarifications & ease of doing business ! Keeping a cool head in this summer is a challenge !!