I spent my summer staring at a grey sky, waiting for the rain to stop. It was also the first time I’d watch a cricket match live, in a stadium, and I’d picked possibly the worst weekend for it. Every sensible instinct said to stay home, save the four-hour drive, watch it on a screen where the weather doesn’t matter. I went anyway. This is the story of what happens when we show up.
We had tickets to India versus Afghanistan at the Dharamshala stadium, one of the most scenic grounds in the country, set 1,457 meters (4,780 feet) up in the Himalayas. Four hours of driving to get there, and of course it was raining. After a solid round of “is this even worth it?” we showed up anyway. I sat there, ringed by peaks that make you feel pleasantly tiny, absolutely certain the rain was never going to stop. And then it did. The sky just opened up, like it had been waiting for us to fully commit to being miserable first.
Our expensive seats had spent hours doing an excellent impression of overpriced rain shelters. But we stayed, and when the umpire gave the green light, the crowd just poured in. Right on cue, the ticket app raised prices by 40%.
Then came the real climb: thirty minutes of glorious, chaotic prep before a ball was even bowled. Players testing the grass. Coaches pacing like anxious parents on the first day of school. Groundmen wiping away every last droplet like it had personally offended them. Everyone acting completely on their own, yet somehow moving like one giant organism.
The national anthem played, and the whole stadium roared. That’s a feeling I still don’t have the right words for, so I won’t try. For a first live match, it was a lot to take in all at once, the mountains, the sounds, the ambiance of a few thousand people cheering.
The pace of the game itself was dizzying. Within sixty seconds, at the end of an over, the entire field would reset: players repositioning, the batsman recalibrating, helmets swapping on or off, the captain signalling a whole new plan. One minute to completely reorganise their world. I sat there thinking it takes me longer than that just to decide how to sign off an email.
That’s when it landed. Do these players carry that instant adaptability home with them? Or do they live with the gap between who they are on the field and who they are once the lights go off? I catch myself saying it too: “I’m different at work, different at home.” Lately I’ve started pushing back on my own line. Our brain isn’t a bento box, all neatly divided into separate compartments. We are the same person throughout, just reaching for different responses depending on what’s on the menu that day.
Then came the moment that stole the entire day. An opposing batsman scored a century. Instead of boos, the whole home crowd stood up and cheered for him. Nobody was thinking about the scoreboard anymore. They just wanted to honor the beauty of what they’d watched. He had exactly one supporter of his own in that stadium, and for a few minutes, he had thousands more who showed up for him. I watched grown adults, strangers to him and to each other, on their feet applauding a man who had just beaten their team. That’s not sportsmanship as a rulebook requirement. That’s a crowd deciding, together and without discussion, that what they’d witnessed mattered more than who it happened to.
The real game is never on the grass. It’s in the stands, in our living rooms, in the corners of our own heads. It’s in how we behave when the plans get rained out and we have to decide, right there, whether to go home or to go anyway. So don’t wait for the clouds to clear before you decide to show up. Rain or shine, go anyway. Get wet. The most beautiful things usually happen right after you decide not to go home.
Hi, I’m Anjani. I am a Leadership & Executive coach and the Founder of The Bento Coach. I believe that coaching works, and I am on a mission to make coaching accessible to everyone. If you would like to explore workshops and coaching sessions on Authority, Culture, Diversity, Leadership and more, connect with me on LinkedIn.
One Response
Beautifully said, Anjani! Your excitement at this first time event is so palpable. And the stress on the cheers for an opposing batsman really heartening . Quite an experience!