Handling Pressure

Way back in 1991, my dearest friend Jaydeep cajoled and convinced me into joining Football. A hard core Cricketer, for a change, I decided to play  this game too. It was a decision made not out of enthusiasm for Football but love for Jaydeep. I knew, this would be the reason for spending more time with him. 

Alien to Football skills, I invariably took to Goal-keeping. Slowly and steadily I started enjoying my role below the Goal Post. 

Purshuramians, the club which was bearing me, was a disciplined unit. Boys used to arrive in time, do their warmup, play the game and do the stretching before retiring for the day. After the stretching exercises we would gather behind the Goal Post where our kits used to be kept and change our shoes, our soiled t-shirts and other equipments. 

In one of those days, after a hard game, totally tired, we having completed the stretching sat down to change the shoes. Our Coach, Satish Deodhar was not satisfied with one of the young forwards, Raghu, and was still on the field giving him lessons. 

According to Deodhar Sir, Raghu had committed a serious mistake and if not rectified would harm his game as a Forward. Deodhar Sir was angrily explaining to him that whenever he would be marching towards the opposite goal with ball in his possession he should anticipate at least two defenders, one to his left and other to his right moving along with him. His words of wisdom were, ‘Forwards should be able to carry along these two defenders and march towards the goal to strike at the right time. Never expect the defenders to leave you alone to shoot a goal’. 

This left me thinking. Till then my imagination of an ideal goal was the strikers leaving the defenders behind them and running along to score the Goal. This new concept of travelling towards your goal with opposition tagging along was strange...... 

and bingo I learned the lesson of my life! 

In life, there are so many occasions when you face challenges. Solving these challenges is a task. Some succeed, some falter, some freeze while others flight. 

For me, after the lesson learnt from Deodhar Sir, I will never be left alone by issues as I march my way towards my goal. It’s upto to me how I handle this small and big pressures while  never loosing my focus of achieving the ultimate. 

Raghu may or may not have scored further goals in Football matches but I got the magic formula to score my goals in life!