Three idiots and a scam that won’t die

Pritish Nandy

Always watch out for 'The Big Obsessive Scam' the media goes after. It often covers up a great deal more than it reveals. It also draws away our immediate attention from issues where we were about to get close to a dangerous truth or two. Poirot famously described it as a red herring, a cunning device to draw people’s attention away from real issues to focus on a non sequitur MacGuffin.


Also read - Sreesanth a modern day Valmiki

Like the MacGuffin, which Hitchcock made cult, The Big Obsessive Scam vanishes or becomes irrelevant once its purpose is over. This is what the spot fixing scam could be: Too much outrage chasing what matters so little to most of us. The evidence in hand is flimsy, so flimsy that it’s unlikely to get past the smallest court but the noise around it is so much one would think World War III has broken out.

The day news channels were chasing Gurunath Meiyappan all the way from Kodaikanal to Madurai to Mumbai to the Crime Branch at midnight, millions were happily sitting in front of their TVs watching Mumbai Indians battling Rajasthan Royals at the Eden Gardens, proving yet again that there are two Indias with their own sets of concerns and priorities. I confess I was among those watching the game, rooting for Rahul Dravid whose team lost with a ball to spare.

But this column is not about two Indias. What bothers me is the carpet bombing scam coverage that ensured there were no goodbyes for the man who with evangelical zeal exposed the sleazy underbelly of Indian politics over the past 5 years, and did his best to set it right. Worse, there was no debate over who his successor ought to be. So the Government sneaked in its own nominee, clearly to undo some of the outstanding work Vinod Rai, India’s bravest Comptroller and Auditor General did in his own low key style.

That may not be so easy though. Rai made the 153-year-old office of CAG a powerful weapon in his fight against corruption by the mightiest in the land. Till Rai came, CAG saw its job as writing long winding reports, more often than not hugely delayed, on the inefficiencies in government systems. None of those reports had the kind of impact that Rai’s reports created, especially those on 2G (revealing $38.9 billion gifted away by the Government to its cronies),  coal mining licences (involving another $34 billion loss of revenue) and the infamous Commonwealth Games that brought us so much shame. Courts intervened, including the highest court in the land; ministers landed up in jail or got shamed and sacked; investigations landed up at the Prime Minister’s door.  

Amidst all this outrage over spot fixing, Rai quietly demitted office last week. He was even more quietly replaced by someone less likely to expose the Government’s lapses.  Several other crucial issues that were being debated in the public space, like China’s incursions in Ladakh, the Vadera land deals, Muslim youth arrested and held for years on trumped up terrorist charges and now being released and, above all, the Supreme Court demanding the freeing of the CBI from the Government’s unholy clutches are now on the backburner. Even the Ranbaxy issue, where intrepid whistle blower Dinesh Thakur exposed the grave misdemeanours of one of India’s leading pharma companies and the dangers implicit in those for millions of us who buy its products, have been largely ignored. All we are left discussing are 3 idiots, a C-grade TV star, a lecherous umpire and a boastful son-in-law of the BCCI chairman, all of whom may well be crooks and fixers but must not be allowed to hijack the nation’s attention and agenda.

A father-in-law is the last person to know what his son-in-law is up to. Allowing him to stay in his holiday home in Kodaikanal is not the same as endorsing his petty vices or (as yet unsubstantiated) attempts to fix IPL matches. I may be a lone voice saying this. But I really think we are all playing into the hands of those who have much more to hide than these dolts. Srinivasan’s enemies (and heaven knows, he has far too many of them) are having a field day. But ask yourself, do you really care whether he heads the BCCI or Sharad Pawar. Or Rajiv Shukla. Frankly, my dear I don’t give a damn.

Cricket - Playing on a rotten wicket

by Bishan Singh Bedi

The Indian Premier League is rotten to the core. But let’s be clear that the rot did not set in yesterday. It has been this way since its inception. The first, almost self-anointed, chairman of the governing council of the IPL, Lalit Modi, has been on the run for reasons best known to the present BCCI president. And the less said about his successor, the better.

Whoever thought these two gentlemen were fit to head IPL ought to be hauled up for all its ills. Equally, anybody associated with IPL, in whatever capacity, is party to the malaise that wraps itself around it.

My life’s experience also tells me that all undeserving holders of high profile offices often meet the end they deserve. But who has been the biggest loser all along? Cricket, of course. And is anybody bothered really? I could have died a million deaths the other day when my wife asked me: “Aren't you ashamed of yourself as a cricketer?” Mind you she’s not a cricket buff at all, but her observation was piercing enough. My misfortune is that I am still alive to face the barrage of questions from others, but there is little I can do to prevent them.

I’m not ashamed to have been a cricketer; but I am ashamed to have my background linked to the present in which cricket has been turned into a religion without any spiritual ethics.

“No punishment would be big enough for ‘dirty/greedy’ cricketers,” the BCCI boss thundered from Kodaikanal. My humble query is this: who created the ‘dirt’ and ‘greed’ in the first place? Surely, the cricketers could not have discovered the ‘dirt’ and the ‘greed’ on their own. So if the cricketers fell prey to an organised brand of avarice, do we really blame them or the IPL and its widespread net of sleaze money?

Not for a moment do I wish to condone the action of the cricketers who have been nabbed. But is this the first instance of crime in cricket IPL-style, and will it be the last?

IPL bares the soullessness of some of the giants of Indian cricket who cannot stop raving about it. It is nauseating to observe, day in day out, India’s former greats competing with each other to outsmart the cricketing dictionary.

“Do you watch IPL?” I've been asked this question often enough. Yes, I do, on TV. Not because I want to, but mustn’t I know what the hell is going on around me in the name of cricket? Sadly, what I see makes for a revolting spectacle that begs a question: why do we not say “this is not cricket?” We never use any other sport to describe the ‘dignity, honesty, uprightness and integrity’ of a human activity better than cricket. But what is provided by the IPL, and highlighted brazenly by the Indian giants, is nothing but a crass cacophony of sycophancy — each trying to outdo the other to impress the bosses who obviously seem to enjoy it no end.

Yes, we see huge crowds in stadia, but I am convinced only a few come to see the cricket. For the rest, it’s just a chance to be part of the din and, and perhaps be caught by television cameras, even if only for a split second.

Am I surprised that the most influential, arrogant and haughty sports official in the history of Indian sport — its present President — has been reduced to an object of mockery?  Here is a man blinded by his own monumental craving for insatiable authority. He is not prone to tolerating any opposition and the entire BCCI is shamelessly familiar with his clout. And now, all these cronies are dumbfounded. They are buying time so that the sixth edition of the IPL can be confined to the corrupted cupboards.

Finally, BCCI is not IPL, but IPL is BCCI.  Youngsters jumping on the IPL bandwagon may do so, at their own peril. I am up to my neck listening to ‘experts’ about how IPL has helped youngsters gain cricket knowledge by sharing dressing rooms with the crème de la crème of the cricketing world.

I am also constrained to remark that the Indian media is sadly running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. It doesn’t quite add up, if you ask me.

Where's the Big Idea?

by M J Akbar

Ever since ideology committed suicide in the early 1990s, those in power have sought to fill the vacuum with ideas. Most ideas were perceptive and prescriptive; some were even brilliant. The flexibility was exhilarating after too many decades of doctrine born in an open mind but killed by a closed one.

Pragmatism became politically correct. But a serious problem was soon evident: it was difficult to make ideas work without a framework. The patterns of democracy encouraged spasmodic birth but hindered growth. Politics eroded the time necessary for nurture. A five-year term in office began with loads of self-congratulation. Then eager eggheads sat down to set policy into language that could buy advocacy from media and support from the legislature. But if the process entered the third, or worse fourth, it was overtaken by uncertainty, spluttered and shuffled before the withdrawal symptoms arrived.

Some ideas, of course, do get through. The first UPA government can take legitimate credit for the nuclear deal with the United States, and the employment programme code named NREGA. The trouble was that both promised more than they delivered.

The nuclear deal was sold to voters as the launching pad for India’s rise into superpower zone. Objective reality argued against hyperbole, but through some heavy winking by powerful politicians, illusion acquired the strength of hope. Enough young voters thought that the door to an Indo-American dream had been flung open. Today, UPA dare not talk about this mirage. The pact of the century has disappeared into some mysterious rabbit hole of amnesia.

NREGA, similarly, was meant to be the first great stride in a transformative journey towards poverty eradication. Instead, its bulk was eaten away by the familiar demons of indifference and corruption. Since 2009, the poor have received lectures on how to live on Rs 32 a day rather than a carefully structured and realistic route map out of the poverty line. They watched while a cabal of politicians and cronies fattened themselves on an unprecedented scale. It is not easy to boggle the Indian voter’s mind, but corruption in the last few years has thoroughly boggled it. In the twilight of its second term, UPA is trying to fight off the gathering darkness with a Food Security Bill, but it is never easy to do in the last six months what could so easily have been done in the first six.

It is usual practice to highlight achievement in any obituary. What is memorable about UPA2 is not positive; the little that is positive is not memorable. The average of scams was at least two a season. All we recall is a repeated sequence of exposure, denial, street anger and authoritarian response until some minister promises legislation that will cure every malaise.

When the glow disappears from bright sparks, even their ideas get dim. Whatever the disease, the medicine is the same. Law minister Kapil Sibal, who plunges into every crisis with the dexterity of Don Quixote, is pushing the brilliant thought of a new law that will cure cricket of sleaze forever and ever. Excuse me: but is match-fixing legal just now?

Every law can be strengthened, but that is not the urgent problem. The present law is good enough for the existing crooks. This is not the first instance of the game being sold. BCCI has banned cricketers for match-fixing but never handed them over for prosecution. Why? To muffle the sound of skeletons rattling from cashstacked cupboards? 

Adulation and sensational levels of money are a heady cocktail, and if some young men get inebriated, it is only a temptation waiting to explode. But the dirt is controlled by older men wearing the heavy make-up of lies. When Delhi police broke the story, they sought to limit the scandal to three idiots from the Rajasthan team. One assumes they were naive since one cannot presume they were complicit. Some very clever men are involved. You can see frightened faces from Chennai to Delhi. 

For the people, sleaze has become a blur, with politicians visible in every crime, from coal to cricket. There is no ideology yet which cleanses the stables, and there will be none until the dregs of current thought have become irrelevant. Nevertheless, another 1990 moment has arrived. Things cannot continue with just a bit of tinkering along the way. 

The next government needs a radical and rational platform of ideas that recognizes how dysfunctional this system has become, and finds the courage to sweep below the carpet. The nerve points of the nation have shifted to the young. They do not want merely a different government; they want a new course that will take India out of this jungle of greed in which governance has become synonymous with greed, and the street a playground for lechery. If nothing is done, their patience will turn into rage.

Austerity has hardened the nation's heart

by Yasmin Alibhai Brown

Under the arches in Waterloo, a man sits, his head bowed. A scarf is wound tightly around his neck, as if he wants to strangle himself. His hands are grimy and covered in cuts, one suppurating. As I give him some coins and antiseptic plasters, I ask him why he is out there. He doesn’t look at me, and seems unwilling to talk.

I am with a friend. We are going to the screening of a forthcoming BBC TV drama. My friend is impatient and then cross that I have stopped and wasted time (it is barely three minutes)  on “these people” – yet after a trip to India my friend told me how awful it was that well-off Indians simply ignored beggars all around them. I remind her of that and she told me: “It’s completely different. They have no welfare there. Here we do. People don’t have to be poor here. It’s a choice.”

I can’t be her friend any more. She is not a bad person but somewhere along this road we are travelling during the recession, she decided that the real enemies within were those who depend on the state or the goodwill of others, “charity pests” as she calls them.

According to the British Social Attitudes Survey (2011), 56 per cent of the British population think benefits are too high and stop people looking for work. In 1983, at the height of Thatcherism, the figure was 35 per cent. Today 63 per cent also believe that children are poor because their parents are feckless and lazy.

As life gets hard for the middle classes, they turn harder and the same is happening to those who define themselves as working class. Most of our people, it seems, approve of the benefits cuts, the bedroom tax, substantially reduced disability allowances and a drastic cull of local services. They are now persuaded that the needy are greedy and are a parasitic hoard responsible for our shrinking GDP and economic woes.

Look around you. Listen to the doctors, church leaders, local councillors and workers, homeless and children’s charities, those who run shelters and refuges, and others. They speak to our consciences, tell us what is happening and are not being heard.

A few days back, Stephanie Bottrill, only 53, killed herself because she could not afford to pay an extra £20 per week for her extra bedroom in a home she had lived in all her life. Did her death cause people to rethink their hostile attitudes to such people? I don’t think so. Their eyes are shut, ears deaf and hearts locked up to stop such emotional intrusions.

Here are some of the truths assiduously avoided. David Stuckler, senior researcher at Oxford University warns “austerity kills”. Suicides rise during times of high unemployment. Since 2011, they have risen dramatically, most of all in the areas where there are no jobs and among people badly affected by the Coalition policies. Stuckler is also concerned about the disabled, those who can’t afford homes, and the sick.

A new report by the British Medical Association (who are not a gang of lefties) warns that government policies are hitting the most vulnerable. A quarter of a million children are already failing to meet the basic standards of normal development. The GP Greg Wood, who worked for Atos, the company charged by the Government with assessing disability claimants, has just resigned because he thinks that the system is biased against the disabled. Food bank suppliers can’t cope with demand; Salford council, one of many, is closing shelters because it is unable to get state money to house the homeless.

The Centre for Global Education confirms, with some apprehension, that the debate on poverty has been redirected away from structural and political causes to opprobrium towards the unemployed and welfare dependents. The national sport of baiting and hating of the poor has been damned in The Lies We Tell Ourselves (Jan 2013) and The Blame Game Must Stop (March 2013), both commissioned by church groups.

In the foreword of the latter report the Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather writes: “Stigmatising people on benefits is politically popular, but it isn’t fair or right... it will make Britain less generous, sympathetic and willing to co-operate... It will make it more difficult for campaigners coming after us to argue for an option for those in poverty, because public opinion will simply not tolerate it.” How true that is, and too late already. Compassion is now a minority hobby in this great country where, remember, the welfare state was created during years of unimaginable  hardship and post-war devastation.

Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, describes austerity programmes as an “unethical experiment” on human beings. Public opinion can scare or encourage politicians. Today millions are backing this human experiment. They, more than the ruthless Government, are responsible for the blood and tears flowing among the unfortunate and disenfranchised. The savage tyranny of the majority, as history shows, destroys nations, social and human bonds. It is happening here. One day we will all miss the nation we once were, but there will be no way back.

Palakkad: A quiet Kerala town where elephants symbolize social status

By PK Krishnakumar, ET Bureau | 25 May, 2013, 04.01AM IST 

The 14 elephants of Angadiyil House have become household names in north & central Kerala. More than profit, it is the sheer passion for these animals that has driven Haridas and Parameswaran to own so many elephants.

Palakkad is quiet and sleepy. A border district between Kerala and Tamil Nadu, it has a few engineering, polytechnic institutions, a popular dam or two, a number of renowned temples; in 2010, Palakkad was scheduled to become India's first "fully electrified district". The town does not boast of its humble offerings, for the concept of 'wealth' here is not determined by currency alone. And as brothers MA Haridas and MA Parameswaran will tell you, sometimes wealth is 10 feet tall, sociable and rather fond of palm leaves.

The brothers own the largest number of elephants in the state, 14 in all, creating a personal asset base of Rs10-12 crore. The Angadiyil House in Mangalamkunnu, rural Palakkad, is witness to 14 pachyderms on parade — but only when they aren't busy handling crucial matters for temples in the area. "There is a good demand for the elephants from various temple managements," says Haridas. Two of their elephants, Karnan and Ayyappan, are over 10 feet tall and preferred by temple management committees to carry the deity during the festival seasons.

Elephants are an essential element of temple festivals in Kerala. In fact, during the festival season, temple managements compete with each other to get the best elephants (ones with well-proportioned growth in terms of height, head posture, length of the tusk, etc) for the festival days, paying a hefty fee to the owner. The elephants have an important role — they carry the idols during the festivals, and temple managements are careful to publicise the event by printing and exhibiting posters with the names and photographs of elephants on temple duty.

Some elephants have superstar status in the state — when they reach a particular temple, thousands of elephant lovers assemble to see them. Stories of elephants and their attachments to a few temples and their owners are told and retold, forming urban legends such as the one about Guruvayoor Kesavan. The most popular elephant of the Guruvayoor temple, Kesavan remains a household name in Kerala; he was even the subject of a biopic after his demise in the mid-1970s. Guruvayoor Padmanabhan, the tallest and most 'good looking' elephant in Guruvayoor temple at present, has acquired the status of a legend.

The 14 elephants of Angadiyil House have also become household names in north and central Kerala. "Our elephants are taken for temple festivals for about 130 days in a year," says Haridas. When they're not busy with the festival season, Haridas and Parameswaran's elephants spend some time in front of the camera. "Once the festival season is over, the demand is usually from film shooting units and event managers for inauguration of shops or other such events," says Parameswaran. "We get enquiries for marriages also, but mostly from Coimbatore or Bangalore," he adds. In the past, elephants were used in timber depots to load trucks with logs.

Dogma will lead to Murder

by A C Grayling

Although defenders of religion like to portray faith as a source of peace and fellowship, and condemn those who commit atrocities in its name as untrue believers, the daily news media show how far this is from being invariably true. In fact, the relentless drip of bad news about religion-prompted violence in the world shows that the more zealous people are in their religious beliefs, the more likely they are to behave in non-rational, antisocial or violent ways.

The cold-blooded public murder of soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich this week is an example. Murders are committed for a variety of reasons, but one thing they have in common is that those who commit them have to be in an abnormal state of mind. From rage or jealousy, through the cold psychopathology of the professional hitman, to the soldier who must be rigorously schooled and disciplined so that he can kill other human beings in defined circumstances, a difference to the normal mindset is required. One potent way of achieving the required mindset is religious zealotry.

Belief in supernatural beings, miracles and the fantastical tales told in ancient scriptures is, at least, irrational and, at worst, pathological. The more earnest the belief, therefore, the less sane is it likely to be in its application to the real world. At the extreme, it not only prompts but also – from their own perspective – justifies believers in what they do. Unnatural lifestyles, self-harm, ritualistic repetitive behaviours, fantasy beliefs and the like – all of them the norm for religiously committed folk – might be harmless to others in most cases, but when they become annexed to hostility to others outside the faith, or to apostates within it, the result is dangerous.

To the ordinarily sane mind, such acts as butchering a stranger in the street in broad daylight, and engineering a mass murder such as happened on 9/11, are in equal proportions lunatic and disgusting. Working backwards from that judgement, we must arrive at the conclusion that the people who do such things are neither ordinary nor sane. They exhibit a defining mark of psychopathology: the ability to proceed by perfectly rational steps from mad premises to horrible conclusions, while yet displaying in most of their surrounding behaviour the appearance of normality.

Consider: the 9/11 murderers engaged in a long period of flying training, planning, financing their activities and living among their victims – even queuing politely to get on the fatal planes with those they were about to kill – and all this takes self-control. But wedged into the outwardly normal behaviour, like a rusted medieval nail driven deep into their brains, was the lunatic belief that they were doing something meritorious, justified and moral.

“Faith,” someone once said, “is what I will die for; dogma is what I will kill for.” The border between preparedness to die and kill is so porous that it is easily crossed. As a result, history welters in the blood of religion-inspired mayhem. The problem is the complete and unshakeable assurance that religion gives its votaries that what they do in its name deserves praise. Agents of the Inquisition burned heretics to death to save them from the consequences of persisting in their sinfulness, so that they would spend less time in purgatory. So it was, they believed, an act of kindness to kill them. The current crop of terrorists do not bother to claim kindness towards their victims; hatred – or, at a poor best, revenge – is the frankly avowed motive. But here the justification is that unbelievers are worthless, deserving nothing but death.

It is a theme of recent critical attacks on religion that it is too often divisive, conflict-generating, atrocity-justifying and inflammatory – and this quite independently of whether any religious claims about supernatural beings or miraculous occurrences are true. Religious apologists are eager to point to the charitable and artistic outcomes of religion either as a palliation or an excuse, but non-religious people do charitable and artistic things, too, and it is hard to detach them from the kindness and creativity, respectively, that are a natural endowment of most human beings no matter what they believe.

In further defence of religion, its apologists haul out the weary canards about Hitler, Stalin and Mao as examples of secular committers of atrocity – the claim even being made that they did what they did in the cause of atheism as such. Apart from the fact that Hitler was not an atheist, the interesting point about ideologies that claim the One Great Truth and the One Right Way is that it does not matter whether it invokes gods or the dialectic of history as their justification; it is their monolithic and totalising character that does the work of making them murderous. The Inquisition of Torquemada and Stalinism are little different in their effects on their hapless victims.

The obvious point to note about the murders carried out in the name of a deity this week, whether Sunni car bomb attacks on Shia in Iraq or the murder of Lee Rigby, is that they were affairs of conviction. To do such things, you have to be convinced to the point of unreason that you are doing right. Note this contrast: in the careful estimations of a scientific world-view, nothing is so certain. The absence of question marks and their prompting of reflection, caution and the search for good evidence are not required when it comes to the eternal truths of faith.

Is there any way of combating the corrosive effects of unreasoning religious conviction that leads to so much murder in the world? Yes: stop making children think that they must implicitly accept and unquestioningly obey one or another supposed Great Truth. Encourage them to be sceptical, to ask for the reasons and the evidence, to see with a clear eye the consequences that might follow from believing an inherited picture of the world that wishes to be immune to challenge or revision, and is prepared to kill people who do challenge it.

Then, in a generation or two, what happened on a Woolwich street might become close to impossible. 

The perils of scoffing at failure

Excessive success can destroy inhibition, and hence the capacity for shame

Rob Steen

May 22, 2013

Let's take a step back. How do we measure success? In this puzzling sporting life, it's not so much death or glory as dosh or glory (hence the fixers, yes, but also the tax-dodging owners). How can fourth place in the Premier League matter more than winning the FA Cup? Happy to prostitute themselves for the almighty TV dollar, the International Acronym Club walk a tightrope, the ECB and CSA as precariously as the IOC and FIFA. Sure-footedness is almost as scarce as an even-tempered English spring.

Success is a slippery beast: hard to capture, harder to hang onto, even harder to define. One man's ceiling is another man's flaw, as Paul Simon almost put it. WC Fields was nothing if not pragmatic: "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it." It helps when you can compartmentalise. A photo in the latest issue of the Cricketer finds Chris Martin's feet nailed invisibly to the spot as Mitchell Johnson shivers his timbers - surely incontrovertible proof that being the object of derision bothered the Kiwi not a jot.

Others are less easily defeated. Look at how Nick Compton, once an intoxicating strokeplayer, reinvented himself as a teetotal Test opener; at how Shane Warne traded in the rough and tumble of Aussie Rules for the subtler if equally destructive flipper. To these determined souls it wasn't the runs or wickets that counted but the preparation: the inner struggle to change, adapt and grow. Ends need means.

	Defining success is appreciably less tricky for a competitor in an individual pursuit than a collective one - unless, of course, you play in an event wherein the rewards for finishing tenth are enough to buy a new home

"The real value in setting goals is not in their achievement. The acquisition of the things you want is strictly secondary. The major reason for setting goals is to compel you to become the person it takes to achieve them." So says Jim Rohn, hailed as "the man many consider to be America's foremost business philosopher" by a magazine trading under the unequivocal title of Success, a publication to which he contributes and one that boasts, indeed, of being "What Achievers Read". Much as one hates to admire any duplicitous arch-politician, Winston Churchill hit the nail on the head: "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."

For professional athletes, life is more problematic. Continuing is seldom a choice. The physicality of the job shrinks the window of opportunity - we might take 50 years to reach the summit of ours; they've got about ten. Their obstacles, moreover, are stiffer. Sure, many of us face some of them in the workplace - racist, sexist or impatient boss, jealous colleague - but not disobedient hamstrings, disruptive weather, unscrupulous rivals, hostile crowds, and media savaging.

How you define success should, ideally, depend less on where you want to end up than where you started from. CLR James reckoned it was all about movement: it isn't "where you are or what you have, but where you have come from, where you are going, and the rate at which you are getting there". Sadly, this is not exactly a popular philosophy in a society keener on greed than persistence, let alone the wherewithal to count blessings.

Professional sport throws up more complexities, primarily because the line separating success from failure makes gossamer seem thick. The finality of the scoreboard, however, is countered by the impermanence of those twin imposters. Widen the context and a brave defeat can feel like a victory, an empty victory a defeat. Success may disappoint; failure may inspire.

Measured often and precisely, sporting success can be unsettling. It usually precedes maturity. It's also very conspicuous. It's how you handle it that matters. That, and the way you handle the only guarantee: failure.

To be a champion almost invariably demands that you dig into the very core of your being, narrowing your focus to such a degree that health - mental, physical and spiritual - becomes an afterthought. To make it to the top demands attaining excellence; staying there means not only maintaining it but withstanding the double blast of fame and schadenfreude. Muttiah Muralitharan is among the more freakish examples.

Defining success, furthermore, is appreciably less tricky for a competitor in an individual pursuit than a collective one - unless, of course, you play in an event where the rewards for finishing tenth are enough to buy a new home, in which case confusion is inevitable. And things can get fearfully complicated for those who play team games that revolve around one-on-one confrontation.

	What were Paul Collingwood's feelings on receiving an MBE after the Ashes victory in 2005? © Getty Images  Enlarge

You won't need to read his as-yet unwritten autobiography, for instance, to imagine Paul Collingwood's feelings upon receiving an MBE for simply being in the right place at the right time when England regained the Ashes in 2005, knowing he hadn't contributed anything of clearly discernible substance. All the more reason to lament that England's all-time greatest outfielder is currently suing a financial adviser to whom he entrusted his family savings.

In defying the black-and-white clarity of solo endeavours, team sports can perplex. Blame/hail the wonder of the draw. If denying can be classified as succeeding, how can you ever be sure what to feel? Did lowly New Zealand regard that home series stalemate against mighty-ish England as a moral victory or an opportunity squandered? Did the latter deem that Auckland rearguard a success, ensuring an upbeat end to a humbling tour, or did they look in the mirror and see both complacency and an inability to cope with expectation? That there can be one public answer and a very different private one to all these questions is an intrinsic part of sport's appeal. A word for this muddled mindset? "Succelure" trips off the tongue nicely.

What, then, of watching England bat at Lord's last Thursday? Did clouds and pitch decree such overt caution or was it the skill and discipline of Trent Boult, Tim Southee, and Neil Wagner? Was Shane Bond justified in touting the New Zealand pace attack as a budding masterwork or did the top order cede the initiative through timidity? Forget - Broadly speaking - about ends justifying means. The most pertinent and time-honoured question is one few answer truthfully: did fear of failure override hunger for success?

The best conquer that fear through sheer loathing: to them it's a dragon not to be obeyed but slayed. That's what drove Roger Federer to his record haul of grand slams. That's what stopped Mike Hussey surrendering his baggy green dream when he turned 30. Judging by the runs gushing from that hitherto erratic bat, perhaps venting to a reporter about his unhappiness at Yorkshire was Adil Rashid's attempt to slay his dragon? But for most of those who have tasted success and crave more, fear of failure is the breakfast of champions: it supplies clear goals, keeps you on track and - dare one say it - honest.

Maybe it's better this way. "A writer like me must have an utter confidence, an utter faith in his star," F Scott Fitzgerald told an interviewer during his alcohol-fuelled descent toward a criminally premature death. "It's an almost mystical feeling, a feeling of nothing can happen to me, nothing can harm me." Once you start scoffing at failure, when you convince yourself you're immune to the consequences, you step outside the tent. And once you've done that, the pissing comes easy.