Winners Never Quit
An amazing story on
Marvan Attapattu, a Chartered Accountant & a Srilankan Cricketer.
Making his debut in
Test cricket for Sri Lanka, Marvan scored a duck in his first innings. And
again, in his second innings.
They dropped him. So he
went back to the nets for more practice.
More first-class
cricket. More runs. Waiting for that elusive call.
And after twenty-one
months, he got a second chance.
This time, he tried harder.
His scores: 0 in the first innings, 1 in 2nd Dropped again, he went
back to the grind. Scored tonnes of runs in first-class cricket
Runs that seemed
inadequate to erase the painful memories of the Test failures.
Well, seventeen months
later, opportunity knocked yet again. Marvan got to bat in both innings of the
Test. His scores: 0 and 0.
Back to the grind.
Would the selectors ever give him another chance?
They said he lacked big-match
temperament.
His technique wasn’t
good enough at the highest level. Undaunted, Marvan kept trying.
3 years later, he got
another chance. This time, he made runs. In an illustrious career thereafter,
He went on to score over 5000 runs for Sri Lanka.
That included 16
centuries* and 6 double hundreds*.
He went on to captain
his country. All this despite taking over 6 years to score his second run in
Test cricket.
How many of us can
handle failure as well as he did? Six years of trying, and failing. He must
have been tempted to pursue another career. Change his sport. Play county
cricket. Or, just give up. But he didn’t. And that made the difference.
The next time you are
staring at possible failure or rejection, think of Marvan.
One more thing, Marvan
Attapattu is a qualified Chartered Accountant.
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