He leads the pack..

Anurag Kashyap leads the pack of maverick directors who have unleashed a new era of originality in Indin cinema

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The phrase is, “Lead the pack” – think about the meaning!

A pack is a collection of carnivorous animals like wolves or hounds. Imagine a pack of wolves moving about in search of prey. Who would be leading the pack? Generally, the wolf who would be the best – strongest, quickest, the most powerful alpha male. That’s the idea behind lead the pack.

As with other English phrases, this idea might have started from the pack of animals but is much wider in use and can be used in almost any situations. So, a film or a novel or a person or anything conceivable could be leading the pack. Let’s take some examples:

1. Several movies have come out of Bollywood of late which break the formula and try to be creative and original. Several young directors are coming forward and boldly experimenting with new ideas. Anurag Kashyap is the maverick director who leads the pack. With several critically acclaimed movies to his credit, he is touted to be India’s answer to Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorcese.
2. There are several new fast bowlers knocking at the gates of Indian national cricket team and Umesh Yadav with his consistent performance leads the pack.
3. Indian entrepreneurs have done well and have built globally respected companies with Infosys leading the pack.

A simple usage note is that whenever you want to talk of someone or something most prominent or the best in a a group of similar things, you’d use the phrase, “Lead the pack”. Such phrases add variety and life to your English communication.

Let’s take some more examples:

1. Several new e-commerce websites have come up in the Indian consumer space and Flipkart.com leads the pack.
2. Chetan Bhagat leads the pack of several new novelists with IIT IIM backgrounds.