"The harder you work, the luckier you get." This quote has been attributed to a lot of people, including, for some strange reason, Jon Bon Jovi. My personal theory about this is that a lot of folks mention him as a source purely because his name is fun to say out loud (you just tried it, didn't you?), and not because he is also a sage/philosopher in addition to being a musician. Of course, there may be people who will claim he is both, while others may provide compelling arguments as to why he is neither, but that is not the point of this post. (As usual, my train of thought is pulling away slowly while I'm still running along the platform.)

Anyway, to continue... most cricket fans (of a certain age) will recall the moment Brian Charles Lara pulled a Chris Lewis delivery to break a 36-year-old record for the highest individual score in Test cricket. What is less known is that when Lara rocked back to play that shot, his foot brushed against the stumps and disturbed the bails. Amazingly, those little pieces of wood did a little split-second dance and fell back into place. The difference between Lara's eventual record score of 375 and 365 (hit-wicket) was a few measly millimetres. For those who think I've just made this little story up, please refer to evidence here.

Obviously, like many obsessive cricket fans, I relate most of what happens on the field to life in general. On this occasion- the profound (non-original) truth is this- at that moment, with a young man on the verge of one of his greatest sporting achievements, the universe conspired to make it possible. Put another way- those prepared to put in the 99.9 percent will, in almost every case, get that final 0.1 percent to fall for them too (call it luck, fate, destiny, match-fixing, whatever). Without the first, you can't really complain about the lack of the second.

Heights by great men reached and kept,
were not attained by sudden flight,
but they, while their companions slept,
were toiling upward in the night.
--- HW Longfellow/ Jon Bon Jovi