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By:

Amey Chitale

28 October 2024 at 5:29:02 am

Bumrah: Turning Pressure Into Poetry

The victorious strategist wins first and then goes to battle Mumbai: Two years ago in Barbados, the scars of India’s crushing ODI World Cup final defeat still lingered and the drought of ICC titles weighed heavily. India had seized control in the middle overs, only to see it slip under Heinrich Klaasen’s fierce assault. With South Africa needing 30 off 30 balls and their in-form batter at the crease, momentum appeared lost. That was when he stepped in to halt the Proteas’ surge. His spells...

Bumrah: Turning Pressure Into Poetry

The victorious strategist wins first and then goes to battle Mumbai: Two years ago in Barbados, the scars of India’s crushing ODI World Cup final defeat still lingered and the drought of ICC titles weighed heavily. India had seized control in the middle overs, only to see it slip under Heinrich Klaasen’s fierce assault. With South Africa needing 30 off 30 balls and their in-form batter at the crease, momentum appeared lost. That was when he stepped in to halt the Proteas’ surge. His spells in the 16th and 18th overs slowed the chase and turned the tide. While Suryakumar Yadav’s spectacular boundary catch grabbed the headlines, his economy of 4.5 and two crucial wickets quietly shifted the balance. India’s fightback was shaped not just at the boundary but through the calm precision of his bowling. Two years later, India were defending a towering 255 at the Wankhede Stadium. Yet, as often happens with big totals, complacency crept in and the game began to slip away. Bethell’s ferocious hitting had nearly turned the contest in England’s favour. Once again, the captain turned to his trusted lieutenant—Mr Reliable. Summoned in the 16th and 18th overs, he delivered with precision. With the asking rate nearing 14, he conceded just 14 runs. Brutal yorkers speared at the batter’s legs, leaving little room to manoeuvre. It was a masterclass in control under pressure, steadying India’s grip on the game. He stayed cool under pressure, handling the storm without surrendering psychologically. While Sanju Samson’s brilliance and Axar Patel’s composure grabbed the headlines, it was again his quiet mastery that helped India regain momentum. Over the years, he has embodied consistency and resilience, thriving when others faltered. Fame and glamour were never his pursuit, yet his presence has often proved decisive—felt in every crunch moment and crucial spell. He is not just a match-winner but a craftsman of control, a bowler who bends the game’s rhythm to his will. Among Greatest Indeed, Jasprit Bumrah ranks among cricket’s greatest fast bowlers—the unsung hero of Barbados and Wankhede, turning pressure into poetry with the ball. His spells are more than memorable moments; they are calculated interventions delivered at the precise juncture where pressure, timing and psychology shape the contest. Not merely a frontline warrior, he is a tactical commander, orchestrating the battle with precision and authority. Sun Tzu, in The Art of War , reminds us: “In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.” The finest generals do not merely attack soldiers; they dismantle strategy. Jasprit Bumrah does exactly that—targeting the batter’s confidence, disrupting the innings’ rhythm and shrinking the time for the chase. At crucial moments, he punctures momentum with precision. Sun Tzu wrote that supreme excellence lies in winning without prolonged battle. Bumrah’s spells are not about dramatic collapses but strategic strangulation. Sustained pressure erodes decision-making and forces errors. His bowling values control over spectacle.   Shivaji Maharaj’s military brilliance lay in using limited resources with strategic precision. His campaigns relied on small, decisive strikes delivered at unexpected moments. With only four overs at his disposal, Jasprit Bumrah turns risk into opportunity—his very presence carrying the aura that, once deployed, the battle will shift. Turning Risks Just as Shivaji Maharaj’s triumphs relied on trusted commanders, India’s victories here hinged on Bumrah’s quiet precision. He was not merely a bowler in the lineup but the commander whose interventions reshaped the contest. A deeper lesson lies in these performances. In an age that glorifies speed and instant success, Bumrah’s craft reminds us that true mastery rests on preparation, clarity and composure under pressure. Success—whether in sport or life—is rarely one dramatic act but the result of discipline and the courage to step forward when the moment matters most. Sun Tzu wrote, “The victorious strategist wins first and then goes to battle.” Bumrah’s spells reflect that philosophy. His impact lies not in sudden collapses but in calculated control, where each delivery serves a larger plan. Cricket fields and historic battlefields may seem worlds apart, yet their strategies often mirror each other. Batters’ blazing strokes may dominate highlight reels, but the quiet control of bowlers like Bumrah often decides a match. He does not simply bowl; he reshapes the battlefield.

Guns, Not Roses: Revisiting The St.Valentine’s Day Massacre

Among the more ‘interesting’ things to have happened on February 14 was the infamous 1929 gangland massacre in a Chicago garage, where seven men of the ‘Bugs’ Moran gang were allegedly gunned down by Al Capone’s men, posing as policemen.


The crime has since been cemented in American urban lore as the ‘St. Valentine’s Massacre.’ It did more than any other single event to awaken a hitherto passive public to the ferocity of Prohibition-era gangland wars.


It also helped fix the gangster as a central figure in America’s cultural imagination, at a time when newspapers, pulp fiction and the infant sound cinema were all beginning to feed off the same brutal material.


Hollywood had, in fact, responded to the rise of organised crime almost in real time. The early 1930s produced a raw cycle of gangster films which were great showcases for legends like James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, Paul Muni and Humphrey Bogart.


Classics like ‘Little Caesar’ (1931) with Robinson as an Al Capone-like gangster, ‘The Public Enemy’ (1931), and the Howard Hawks-directed original version of ‘Scarface’ (1932) – also based on Capone with Paul Muni in a seminal performance - had portrayed bootleggers as violent social climbers, volatile and crudely materialistic, reflecting an America unsettled by economic collapse and the sudden visibility of criminal wealth.


It was in the long interregnum between the raw vitality of the early 1930s gangster films and before the operatic and myth-making rehabilitation of the gangster in the 1970s that cult director Roger Corman released ‘The St. Valentine's Day Massacre’ in 1967.


Known by several memorable sobriquets, Corman, called the ‘The Pope of Pop Cinema’ was known for his shoestring shockers which he helmed with consummate skill and dynamism.


Notable among these were the now-classic, ultra-low-budget horror films of the early 1960s based on Edgar Allan Poe’s tales of macabre like ‘The Pit and the Pendulum,’ ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ and ‘The House of Usher’ - all starring the legendary Vincent Price. These baroque and lurid films established Corman as a director who could conjure atmosphere and ideas far in excess of his budgets.


Corman was given his biggest financial backing yet for ‘The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre,’ and he famously wanted Orson Welles for the part of Al Capone, with the great Jason Robards – one of America’s finest stage actors - cast as Capone’s deadly rival, George ‘Bugs’ Moran.


The studio shot down the proposition, instead miscasting Robards as Capone. The affable and highly talented George Segal, then at his peak, was also wasted as one of the Gusenberg brothers, Moran’s allies.


As a result, Robards hams it up as ‘old Scarface,’ utterly lacking the intimidating ferocity of Rod Steiger’s Al Capone before him, or Robert De Niro’s over-the-top flamboyance in Brian De Palma’s ‘The Untouchables’ (1987).


More than Robards or Segal, it is Ralph Meeker as Moran who does the better acting job. Oh yes, amid the wry commentary and bursts of intense Tommy-gun fire, there is also a walk-on part by a then-unknown Jack Nicholson.


Despite all its flaws, the film quite brilliantly captures Prohibition-era gangland Chicago. Its clipped, semi-documentary style, its refusal to romanticise its characters, and its emphasis on systems rather than psychology make it feel oddly modern. Corman treats organised crime less as melodrama than as a business model, complete with hierarchies, redundancies and ruthless efficiency.


It is Corman who is the real star of the picture, hammering home a distinctly pre-Godfather message about a naïve America in which the power structures of the executive suite and the corporation are eerily similar to those of a mob syndicate.


When people think of American organised crime on screen today, the monumental gangster epics that immediately spring to mind are Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘The Godfather’ trilogy (1972-90) with its operatic grandeur; Sergio Leone’s mournful, autumnal ‘Once Upon a Time in America’ (1984) or Brian De Palma’s flamboyantly excessive and over-the-top ‘Scarface’ remake (1983) and ‘The Untouchables.’ These films have come to define the mythology of American organised crime globally.


Buried somewhere beneath these monuments lies Corman’s ‘The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.’ It lacks their grandeur and emotional pull, but in its bluntness and scepticism it reveals an earlier, harsher truth about the genre: that long before gangsters became tragic anti-heroes, they were simply men with guns, operating in a country only beginning to recognise what unchecked power really looked like.

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