At the initial stages of the career of any professional in any field, guidance becomes a necessity. The need for a person that would walk them through the tough stages of their career, show them the illuminated path and then vicariously enjoy the success of that person. We call this person a mentor. Accept it or not but a mentor plays an important part in shaping an individual’s life and an even more vital part when the person is down and out and Cricket is no different from any other profession that exists on this planet.
There is a saying in the world of cricket, ‘You can take the cricketer out of cricket but not the cricket out of the cricketer’. As confusing as that may sound, the plausibility of this statement is being proved by legends of Indian cricket, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman and Sourav Ganguly. These 4 stalwarts of Indian cricket have played a major part of their spectacular careers together and took Indian cricket to new heights while they were serving the nation. Now that they have retired, the cricketer inside them has turned into a mentor and the purpose of them remains the same only the mode of it has changed.
In the case of Sourav Ganguly, it can be said that he was a mentor from the time he took over the captaincy of the Indian side. In my list, this places him a touch above the others because of him playing three roles at one time, a player, a captain and a mentor. Ace cricketers like Harbhajan Singh, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh and Zaheer Khan are known to the world of cricket because of the faith imparted on them by Ganguly. During his reign, Ganguly relied on youngsters and the team did achieve a lot of success then. Some cricketers like, Mohd. Kaif missed the bus to fame but Ganguly left no stone unturned to make it easier for Kaif.
Recently, Sachin Tendulkar decided to mentor 11 cricketers but that sounded more like a promotional activity by Adidas where he was to mentor young cricketers signed by sports apparel giant, which had names such as Parvez Rasool, Unmukt Chand, Manan Vohra, Vijay Zol and many more. Imagine the jubilance on these youngsters if Sachin mentors them to show them the way in their careers.
Rahul Dravid has been known to nurture many young talents since the time he had rested his sword from the international level. Players like Ajinkya Rahane, Sanju Samson, and Stuart Binny all have been a part of the Rajasthan Royals and blossomed under the guidance of Rahul Dravid. By retaining these 3 during this year’s IPL, Dravid has shown that he will continue to bestow faith upon them. The pattern with which Rajasthan Royals bought players during the IPL also showed that they want to give exposure to many young cricketers at the top-most level. Buying Unmukt Chand, Ankush Bains, Deepak Hooda, Rahul Tewatia, Ankit Sharma and others proved their intent.
VVS Laxman, though has not come out openly with regard to mentoring any player, but the players after which he went during the IPL auction was a testament to his intentions about contributing towards Indian cricket covertly. KL Rahul, Karan Sharma, Manpreet Juneja, Ricky Bhui and Chama Milind are some of the young cricketers bought by SunRisers who can be the stars of the future.
Adhering to the statement above, these cricketers can never be taken out of the game; they will find a way to mentor these cricketers. When we talk about Yuvraj or Harbhajan or any cricketer mentored by Ganguly, we remember the time when he promoted these cricketers to get them to a stage where they are now. Rahane recently dedicated his maiden test century to Rahul Dravid for he said that without him it would have been difficult scoring runs.
When the going gets tough, the tough gets going but to pick up that tough person from the dust when the tough going nails him down, a person whom we call a mentor steps up and lends a shoulder to help the tough to get going.
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