From a Bench Warmer To a National Hero

Stay close to your core.

Let your core feed you or bleed you.

But never abandon it.

This is the inspiring story of a young man from Kerala who once sat quietly on the reserve bench of the team, watching others lift the ICC Men's T20 World Cup trophy in 2024 in the West Indies. Two years later, he would stand on the podium as the “Player of the Tournament”.

His name is Sanju Samson.

In 2024 he was good enough to make the India national cricket team, but not good enough to play a single match. The tournament came and went, and Sanju remained what critics often called him — a “bench warmer.”

Later, he was part of India’s tour of Australia. Once again, he travelled with the team, trained with the team, but watched the matches from the sidelines. Opportunity knocked rarely.

When he finally got chances in a few games, the results were disappointing. His batting failed him badly. The team management tried him in different batting positions, searching for the right fit. His wicket-keeping remained dependable, but in a country like India, where talent flows like a river, dependability alone is often not enough.

Soon new young players arrived with explosive performances. Sanju was dropped.

For any sportsperson, this is the most dangerous moment , when the world begins to doubt you and slowly you begin to doubt yourself.

Emotionally drained and questioning his own ability, the dream of becoming a World Cup hero began to feel almost unrealistic. Even his most loyal supporters were preparing themselves for the possibility that their hero’s time had passed.

But there was one thing Sanju refused to abandon, his “core”.

Even when he was out of the team, he practiced like a man who believed his opportunity could come in the next match.

When the 2026 ICC T20 World Cup began in India, the team’s famous young opening pair initially struggled under pressure. Yet India kept winning, someone or the other stepped up in every match.

Then came the shock.

South Africa defeated India convincingly in a group match. The defeat stunned the stadium into silence. When you play India in India, you are not facing just eleven players,  you are facing an entire nation in the stands. Criticism drowned the Captain and the Coach.

The team management analysed the problem quickly. Their two left-handed openers were struggling against certain right-arm bowling angles. The solution was simple but bold, introduce a right-handed batter at the top and add to the fire power in the Power-play.

That meant bringing Sanju Samson back.

Some critics mocked the decision. Some even said India was effectively playing with ten players. The coach and the captain remained steadfast in their decision.

Those inside the team knew something important: Sanju had been practicing every day as if his chance would come tomorrow.

His first two matches at the group level were ordinary. Critics snarled as India’s chance of getting into the knock out stage following the defeat became thin, but the management kept him on even after they reached the knock out stage.

The Virtual Quarter Finals, the first match in the Knock-Out changed everything.

At Eden Gardens in Kolkata, chasing 197 against the West Indies wickets kept falling around him. Amid the chaos stood Sanju Samson , calm, composed, and unshakeable.

He scored ‘97 not out’, guiding India to victory and into the semi-finals. The country suddenly sat up and noticed. The hero they were looking for in the World Cup has arrived. Overnight, the former bench warmer became a national hero.

In the semi-final at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, India was put to bat first. Sanju delivered again,  a magnificent ‘89 runs’, helping India post 253. England chased valiantly, the match was won by seven runs. The nation erupted.  Senior cricketers and commentators gave him his due. Millions began following him on social media. His journey from obscurity to stardom captured the imagination of the country.

Then came the final. At the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, India lost the toss and were asked to bat on a tricky new pitch. Once again Sanju rose to the occasion. He scored another brilliant 89, leading India to a massive total of 255. The top three batters all scored rapid fifties, a trio, cricket experts later called “The Famous Three.” New Zealand never recovered. India won the final by 96 runs. The disgrace of being a joke to even the most Junior cricketers of the team turned to respect.

Sanju Samson finished the tournament with 321 runs at a strike rate of 199.37 from five innings and was named “Player of the Tournament”. He hit 24 sixes in these many innings.  

Behind this story lies another powerful story.

The story of a father, a Delhi policeman from a small fishing village in Kerala, and a mother who believed in the power of sports and their children’s dreams. They took their young boys to cricket training from the age of five.

Eventually the father made a life-changing decision: he left his job and moved the family back to their village in Thiruvananthapuram so that his children could pursue cricket seriously even though it meant he had to work harder and longer to give them the training and the playing gears. The youngest boy in that family was Sanju Viswanath Samson. The boy who spent more time sitting on the national team benches than playing matches. The boy who sometimes failed so badly that even he doubted his own talent. Yet he kept working.

He stayed true to his “core”. Today his story has entered the folklore of Indian cricket, a story that will be told and retold for generations. Not because he scored runs. But because he never abandoned the talent he believed God had given him. So remember this:

Stay true to your core.

Work on your gifts.

Trust the abilities placed inside you.

Even when you feel like nothing more than a bench warmer, if you stay close to your core, one day your core will deliver you. It could be tomorrow, or the day after.

But it will.

The ongoing ICC T20 Super Eight stage brought India face to face with a harsh reality at Eden Gardens in Kolkata.

In their first Super Eight encounter, the India ran into a relentless South Africa and were handed a crushing 76-run defeat. It was not merely a loss, but a dismantling.

Chasing the not so formidable yet a fighting South African total of 187 at Kolkata, India’s celebrated young batting order dissolved under pressure. Wickets fell, confidence drained, and the chase never truly began. Amid the ruins stood one defiant figure — Shivam Dube — whose fighting 42 was less a rescue and more a statement of resistance.

South Africa were clinical in every department. Their fast bowlers struck with authority, their spinners tightened the grip, and India’s famed batting line-up went up in smoke.

India now lie wounded.

But tournaments are not won without scars.

The question that lingers in the humid Kolkata air is this: can this young Indian side rise from the ground? Will they absorb the blow, steady themselves, and fight back? Or will the weight of expectation grow heavier, tightening its grip as the Super Eight journey continues?

The next match will not just test their skill.

It will test their character.

"Hamnet" : A review

 “Hamnet” . A review.

It is remarkable to observe how a young man behaves before a maid and how a young woman opens her heart to the man she loves. From the very first meeting, William and Agnes lose themselves in each other, bound by curiosity, desire, and a quiet understanding that grows into a profound love.

 Director and screenwriter  Chloé Zhao, adapting Maggie O’Farrell’s novel ‘Hamnet’, elevates this romance to lyrical heights. The film does not merely tell a love story; it immerses us in the emotional world of two young people discovering intimacy, partnership, and destiny in a harsh and uncertain time.

 When tragedy strikes the married couple through the death of their third child, Hamnet, the tone of the film shifts into aching sorrow. Agnes is raw and unrestrained in her grief. She does not hide her pain and openly accuses William of not being present when their son died. Her sorrow is loud, physical, and deeply human. William, on the other hand, absorbs this grief in silence. He accepts her accusations without protest, carrying his own suffering inwardly.

 Yet William’s grief is neither small nor brief. It burns within him for years, eventually finding expression in words. The film beautifully shows how the great writer, William Shakespeare, transforms his personal anguish into art. Through this transformation, we witness how pain becomes poetry and how private loss becomes universal emotion. The audience is given a rare opportunity to see how Shakespeare’s heartache shaped the words that would later break and heal countless hearts across generations.

 Agnes’s closeness to nature, her pagan beliefs, and her instinctive understanding of life and death are captured with great sensitivity. These elements blend seamlessly with Chloé Zhao’s direction and Lukasz Zal’s luminous cinematography, which paints the countryside as both nurturing and cruel. Nature speaks through Max Richter’s music and becomes a witness to love, loss, and survival.

 However, the film does drag at certain moments. Its slow pacing may test the patience of some viewers through the two hours screen time, and without the fine ending and the realistic depiction of the period, the emotional impact might have been weaker. Still, the authenticity of the setting and the sincerity of the performances save it from becoming indulgent.

 “Keep your heart open” is the central message the film offers to the world — a reminder that love and grief coexist, and that closing oneself to pain also closes one’s capacity for love. This message is made powerful by the moving performances of  Jessie Buckley  and Paul Mescal, who lead the cast with natural, restrained, and deeply affecting portrayals.

 In the end, ‘Hamnet’ is not just a story about Shakespeare’s son; it is a meditation on love, loss, and the alchemy of suffering into art. It lingers in the mind long after the light fades on the screen.

 

The final of WPL 2026

In the first phase of WPL 2026, Jemimah looked like she was falling apart. Timing was off, confidence shaken.

Then someone said something. And something shifted.

Suddenly there was power—real power—backed by proper cricketing shots. She stayed close to her core, played straight, and more importantly, decided she would not give up. My guess? Meg Lanning. Because Meg doesn’t do drama—she plays her game, and she makes others believe in theirs.

Whatever DC did before the final, it worked.

Now RCB have 203 to chase.

To win this, they’ll have to play the best game they’ve played all season.

Yes, finals carry pressure. And yes, under pressure, teams can fold—sometimes cheaply.

But this RCB is different.

Remember their first match? They fought till the last over and won. Since then, they haven’t just played matches—they’ve played to win. Every game. No shortcuts.

The only question now:

Has the gameless week after finishing top of the table slowed their resolve?

Or has it sharpened their hunger?

The chase will tell.

The Parisian Coffee Culture

Changes in coffee cafes of Paris

One Battle After Another

One Battle After Another

A film that feels like a cinematic reflection of what we read and watch in the media today, One Battle After Another unfolds as a crime–drama–thriller rooted in the uneasy realities of contemporary America. The story moves between the believable and the unbelievable—yet everything feels disturbingly close to what is already happening on the ground.

Spanish-speaking revolutionaries assist illegal migration and engage in terror activities aimed at destabilizing the nation, while officers—some driven by white-supremacist ideologies—counter them in the name of protecting the country. These larger conflicts are told through deeply personal lives: an ex-revolutionary (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his mixed-heritage daughter (Chase Infinity, in a striking debut), bound together by survival, memory, and flight.

An officer obsessed with “cleansing” the country (Sean Penn) resurfaces from the past, haunting the father and daughter and forcing them into a desperate escape. Surprisingly, help comes from an old revolutionary network long believed to be dormant. Their journey takes us through an illegal immigrant camp run by a legal immigrant (Benicio Del Toro), while the officer seeks to destroy the only evidence of his own moral collapse—his illicit desire for those he is duty-bound to kill.

The narrative is gripping and layered with suspense, brought vividly to the screen by Licorice Pizza writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson. Cinematographer Michael Bauman shoots the film in VistaVision, recreating the rough, muscular nostalgia of 1970s cinema—raw, uneasy, and forceful.

An adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, the film shows Anderson at his best, inspiring both cast and crew to deliver performances that resonate in every frame. DiCaprio deliberately restrains his performance, perfectly fitting the weary ex-revolutionary, while Sean Penn explodes with unsettling energy as an officer who commits terrible acts in the name of order.

Believable and unbelievable at once, the film ultimately offers international audiences a visceral sense of life along the borderlands of present-day America—messy, dangerous, and morally fractured.

PS:

Not an expert review, but a personal reflection of an ordinary person who likes to stay informed and attentive to the world one lives in... 

Amy Carmichael

In Memory of Amy Carmichael on her 75th Death Anniversary on January 18th. 

Living with her in our hearts,

The way she loved Jesus

A love that filled her with joy and peace,

A joy she lived to share with others.

From that love she found the strength

To do what seemed impossible,

To give a home,

To become a mother to the orphaned.

In Jesus she found courage

For every obstacle that crossed her path.

Remembering you, Amy,

Light and inspiration,

A model of love and quiet joy—

Teaching us to give everything

To what we are called to do,

Whatever our life’s circumstances may be.