The great thing about social media is the wealth of in-depth stories you get on emerging cricketers that legacy media never bothered with, even a decade ago.
The likes of Yashasvi, Vaibhav, Kartick Sharma, Sakib Hussain and their ilk all have such amazing examples of struggle, tenacity and luck.
What is sobering is to remember that the stories you read are a perfect example of survivorship bias, you are reading all these stories because they made it.
And for each such example there are thousands who might have been just as talented, worked just as hard but did not make it because of the way fate dealt their hand. The overwhelming majority's journey towards a pro sporting career ends in heartbreak, and that's true around the world.
Which is why I believe that top level sport can only be accessed by unreasonable people, because anybody reasonable would see the odds and decide one in ten thousand odds were way too much of a chance.
And that's why we celebrate top level athletes and revel in their life stories, because they've decided to take a chance so many of us would have hesitated to have taken even if we had the talent.
You don’t see this too often.
Nike congratulates Adidas marathoner Sabastian Sawe on his 1:59:30 marathon world record.
Today, Sawe broke Kelvin Kiptum’s 2:00:35 world record and became the first man to run first sub-2:00 marathon on a record-eligible course. Eliud Kipchoge did it in 2019 but it was not record-eligible.
since we have four of them at home -- as many as England, Spain and France combined -- and we don't want to be greedy," back in 2018. -Gabriele Marcotti after Italy failed to qualify for the WC.
I'd say, "This isn't funny anymore," but I cracked that one last time. And I used the one about "letting somebody else have a chance to win a World Cup,...
"It was just a fight to me at the time. But on reflection, I realized I was watching a culture shock of sorts. The Budokan was silent. Quiet. I could hear people crying. It was like a solar eclipse had suddenly blackened out all of Japan. It was a feeling of doom." -Ada Kok
Imagine being a Japanese who is excited about the entry of Judo in the Olympics (Tokyo, 1964) for the first time.
Then imagine seeing a Dutch guy (Geesink) simply overpower your countryman (Kaminaga) at the Budokan in the final.
Absolute heartbreak!
As per Steyn, for the first three years of his career Pollock was his boot sponsor. Steyn got all his leftovers – which were a hell of a lot better than anything he could afford at that time.
Interestingly, Steyn later beat Pollock to become SA's highest Test wicket taker.