I knew he never used his brains...

As I write this, my handy mob-net has just conveyed to me that India won the 2nd test in Sri Lanka. Yeeeah. Whatever.
You see, with IPL sucking all the joy out of One Day cricket, leave alone Test matches, this win should mean nothing to me... if it wasn't for a moment of brilliance that I heard about, that occured in between the match..

Rewind to India's first innings. Virender Sehwag is standing tall among the ruins. The score stands at 327 for 9, with Viru on 199 not out. He's been there from ball one. The twin duo, Murali and the new wonder kid, Mendis, have broken India's back again. And now, there's just Ishant Sharma, as good a batsman as my mom ( ya,ya, ok... and me. ) to keep him company. Sehwag atlast got his chance to bat and thus reach the magical figure of 200 if he could only get the single.

And then, the unthinkable happened.

On the 3rd ball of Muralitharan's over, Sehwag hit the ball to a vacant part of the ground. The Indian team rose up to clap for this bald ball beater.
And he refused the run.

He said no.

He turned down the free single which would have got him to a milestone any batsman craves and few achieve.. just so that the number 11, Ishant, wouldn't be exposed to 3 full deliveries of and risk him getting out. He wanted to make sure the Indian score carried on, rather than reach a milestone and watch his partner get out and deserting him, as they had all day.
Then, being the drama queen that he is, Viru tried and almost got away with, of all things, a reverse sweep of the 5th ball of the over. Finally, he took a single of the last ball of the over and reached his magical 200.

The very next over, left with just 2 balls to defend, Ishant Sharma got out to the very first he faced, undoing Sehwag's plans.

Sehwag won the man of the match. Darn right. But in my books, it isn't for the 251 runs he scored in the match. It's for the one run he so selflessly refused. The run that mattered the most to any cricketer on this planet.. except him. For showing me the ending to a phrase I didn't know had another ending.

You see, I always believed that Sehwag never used his head while batting, getting out to 'brainless shots'. I was right. He never uses his head.. he uses his heart while he's out there. And for that, today, I respect him more than any cricketer I ever have.
I can't help but remember the countless times in recent years since Sehwag came into cricket that he was touted as Sachin's clone. Today, as far as I'm concerned, for this act alone, he has overtaken his mentor, records be damned.

I know one thing to be true always. The shrewd will win. You will never succeed or reach the heights of your career or field unless you use your grey matter. But, for me, the soft spot will always be with the 'also-rans'.. the people who thought with their hearts rather than their brains, and in doing so, brought a moment of brightness in this 'winner takes all' rat-race we call life. Because they dared to follow their hearts rather than follow protocol, they dared to do the unexpected when only the expected made sense... they dared to show they cared for others rather than themselves.

Applaud this brainless baldy, guys. He's finally made me realise that, besides the army, there really are some people in this land who do indeed put country over personal happiness.