Jokes Apart | Cricket 2023: Thank you Team India for etching a place in a billion hearts

They were The Invincibles, but in the end it was not meant to be. As India lost, memories came flooding back of world cups past that we had won. I remember watching the 1983 final at Lords on my grandparents’ black and white EC TV in Bombay. I was only seven then, so the match is a bit of a blur. What I do remember is that the television screen was very blue. Back then the prevailing belief was that the television set emitted harmful rays, the dangers of which could be mitigated by affixing a blue protective screen on top of the original one. For my generation, the first major win we remember is the World Championship of Cricket in Australia in 1985. It was labelled the mini world cup, although the same teams participated as they would in the official version. Famously, Ravi Shastri was presented with an Audi car, a big deal in India in those days. As Sunil Gavaskar recalls in One Day Wonders, “Unknown to Ravi we all had sneaked into the car…soon we had players on the bonnet, on top and behind the car. It was my job by virtue of being in the front seat to inform Ravi about what was happening in front because the players on the bonnet were blocking his view. He almost knocked down Adrian Murrell and Patrick Elgar, the photographers. Fortunately, the ride ended without any damage except to the seats in the car, where some champagne had been spilt. The Australian crowd loved it, because although a car had been presented every year for the last few years, none of the winners had done anything more than pose with the keys in front of the car.” When an Indian journalist tartly asked in the post-match presser if the victory was a fluke, Gavaskar recalls replying tongue firmly in cheek, “Since this is the age of sequels to hit movies like Jaws I, Jaws II, Rocky II, this win could be termed as Fluke II.” (Talking of pressers, I couldn’t fathom why good-natured Rohit Sharma spent the better part of the evening before the final in a long press conference, patiently answering annoyingly repetitive questions about tomorrow’s plans. The night before the big exam one ought to be swimming relaxing laps in the hotel pool.) Then followed a long drought, which ended in the Dhoni years: The 2007 T20 World Cup victory and the ODI World Cup in 2011, when a happy tear rolled down my face in real-time. The country was so enthused it segued seamlessly into Anna’s anti-corruption movement. The T20 win came out of the blue—the format was still new and the senior players had skipped the tournament. The famous last over was bowled by Joginder Sharma, who had an unexpected moment of glory. In 2003, India lost to Australia in the final in Johannesburg, after which we experienced the same sense of national anti-climax, that we did last month. Just last month! For some reason, it seems longer than that. Reference 2003, everyone was puzzled by Dinesh Mongia holding his place in the side while doing nothing at all until the captain, Sourav Ganguly, put speculation to rest by dubbing Mongia the lucky mascot.

For most of World Cup 2023, one had the feeling that it was too good to be true. To win ten games on the trot is no mean feat. While we had a couple of close games, this tournament was exceptional because of India’s sheer dominance with bat and ball. It was a team possessed. KL Rahul, coming after a long injury lay-off, was plain sublime, a much-improved wicket-keeper, while also becoming the team’s reliable go-to for DRS referrals; Rohit played selflessly for the team, giving India blazing starts; Kohli came good when it mattered, digging in and executing gritty sheet anchor knocks, albeit there were times when he was a touch selfish. Mohammad Shami, not in the original eleven, grabbed his chances after the injury to Hardik Pandya, who was sorely missed in the finals. Every time Shami had the ball in his hands, one expected a wicket to fall. Such was his skill and potency on placid batting tracks where teams were scoring in excess of 300. Bumrah, Siraj, Shreyas, Jadeja, Kuldeep, Gill (despite dengue), everyone was in on the act. In India, we covet individual achievement as much as the team winning; King Kohli gave us that pleasure in full measure, first equalling, then overtaking Tendulkar’s record of 49 centuries. For my generation, there was a tinge of sentimentality involved: These were once-in-a- generation players that were playing in their last World Cup. We executed a remorseless peerless brand of cricket, the jigsaw always in place. The best teams, New Zealand and Australia, were reduced to being the underdogs coming into the semis and the final. It was reflected in the betting odds, with Sportsbet paying $1.40 for India to win and Australia being $2.90 outsiders. Those who don’t follow sports, or are not as passionate about it, find it a silly the way it affects fans mentally. How can someone you don’t know, doing something someplace else, have a bearing on your spirit? The neutral observer can find this a waste of time. Fact is that it does affect us. We feel that we know the players better than our partners and parents. We are on first-name terms with them. The team doing well gives a fillip to our day-to-day lives. The plumber fixes taps better. The carpenter makes his best chair. The beautician plucks eyebrows better, although I’m not sure if eyebrows are plucked anymore. I know that I was cycling harder uphill as part of my exercise routine, the match playing on the phone in the basket affixed to the handlebar. I was riding but not seeing, like Shastri and his Audi. Only the friendly neighbourhood grocer loses interest in his customers who are just getting in the way of him watching the match. For a change, he treats customers as a hindrance, not an ATM. After the dust has settled, we tend to obsess over the what-ifs and could-have- beens. What if Travis Head had dropped Rohit? Why did Rohit have to play that shot, having already scored ten in the over from Maxwell? Why did they play on a used pitch? Did the dew take the demons out of the pitch? Was it a good idea to bring in Shami first change when Siraj had been doing the job all along? Post-mortems are part of fan fetish. What the tournament did was to introduce a younger audience to the subtle pleasures of long-form cricket, with its twists, turns, phases and the possibility of come-backs. Before the World Cup questions had been raised about the relevance of the format. As Sanjay Manjrekar pointed out, the ODI is more like a condensed form of Test cricket rather than an extension of T20. Tournaments have a way of seducing the fan, drawing her in deeper and deeper; one enters a parallel universe. It’s an exercise in self-containment, an escape as well as a pleasant prison where one is held captive of one’s own volition. The Indian fan large-heartedly throws herself into football world cups in faraway lands where India doesn’t even feature. This was happening in our backyard; our boys were in the thick of it all. They didn’t let us down. For that the Indian fan will eternally be grateful. This team will hold a special place in a billion hearts. Trophy? Bah humbug. That’s not sour grapes. It’s the sweet fruit of toil. The writer is author of ‘The Butterfly Generation: A Personal Journey into the Passions and Follies of India’s Technicolor Youth’ and editor of ‘House Spirit: Drinking in India’. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost_’s views._ Read all the  Latest News,  Trending News,  Cricket News,  Bollywood News, India News and  Entertainment News here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.