Book Review: The Test Of My Life

The Test of My Life by Yuvraj Singh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The book offers a glimpse into the journey of a top class sportsman and the ordeals faced with injuries/illness. The authors provide an insight into the ambitions, highs and lows in the life of Yuvraj Singh. The problem with the book is there is way too much description of particular cricket matches which gets redundant at times for someone watched that matches.

What holds this book together is though the way Yuvraj describes his killer instinct to fight cancer, the details around chemo treatment, the importance of having friends and family in one's life stressing that work is not everything and one should have people around who would stand by then through thick and thin. The authors further go on to explain the processes and pains associated with chemotherapy. The heart here is in the right place. Yuvraj did a good job stressing the fact that cancer can be overcome and the way he fought through all of those and came back to play for India again shows that it is doable.

The other thing that Yuvraj stresses is his ignorance of the cancerous symptoms while playing for the much coveted World Cup 2011 showing his resolve to achieve his aims and put his life on the line for it. This on one hand stresses what it meant to Yuvraj to get the cup for India at the same time these chapters also introduce the what symptoms for cancer and that it is important to prioritise one's health against all his ambitions.

An extra star for the intent behind the book!

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Book Review: A century Is Not Enough

A Century Is Not Enough : My Roller-coaster Ride to Success by Sourav Ganguly
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A good read overall (4.5 maybe). Towards the last couple of chapters I sort of found it a bit boring but completed the book nonetheless. If you have followed Ganguly, you will find this a very Ganguly-esque book. You will actually visualise Ganguly saying these in an interview. Its that close.

The good parts of the book are the feelings Ganguly shares along the way, the feeling of being selected for the India team for the first time, the shy, vulnerable Ganguly with the feelings of anxiety, the feelings of inferiority sitting among the stalwarts, the apprehensions etc. From that point to the most confident ( and to an extent an arrogant) Ganguly, you can feel the journey. He puts a reason to why he would be overly aggressive or arrogant at times and I was convinced and found myself respecting him a tad bit more now. Though I did feel at times he had really become a bit too overconfident towards the end of his career and wanted to sit on his past laurels, I could learn so much from a completely different angle as to how the ups and downs in life should be handled, how to cope through situations when people want to pull you down etc.

I would recommend this to anyone who follows a bit of cricket, who knows the events in Ganguly's career and wants to pick up Ganguly's mind when he faced through those situations or anyone who is just looking for some motivation getting around some difficult times in life.

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