Monday, June 15, 2009

Three cheers for 'Team India' !

It is 2 AM and here I am in the company of my laptop, not in the very best of moods. I’ve just returned after watching England defeat ‘Team India’ to mark their exit from the ‘T20 World Cup’. In fact, I’m really disgusted…. !

No. My current frame of mind has nothing to do with the performance of the team. Absolutely not. The reasons for my repugnance are anything but the events that occurred on the field there at Lord’s.

I had seen this coming even before the tournament had started. Right since that ‘bring back the cup’ campaign got underway. There were those ‘wish the team luck’ promotions all over the place. On tv, radio, newspapers…. People even organized special prayers, havans and what nots…. All the news channels, as usual, were quick to try to cash the event. Breaking news captions were hijacked by the latest scores rather than those events of national or international importance.

And now, after the team has failed to reach the next round, everyone is jumping in to have their share of the ‘team-bashing’. The ‘experts’ on tv are trying to point out the flaws of each and every player. The unpardonable blunders that the captain made. The lack of technique that led to the loss.

And if all that wasn’t enough, they are ready with video clips of the players walking around the streets of London accusing them of ‘sight-seeing’ and ‘shopping’ while they should have been practicing. I wonder what they would have done with those clips had the team pulled off an amazing victory….

I don’t have the heart to pick up the newspaper in the morning. But I guess some people would even come out on to the streets in protests and burn some posters or effigies.

When will we start taking sport as sport and not a matter of life and death ??? First of all we put all the possible pressure of the world on our team to not only to perform but also to win the cup. Having done that, we expect nothing but a victory in the finals from the same team. We aren’t ready to accept anything short of that in any case.

Can’t we accept the fact that our team was outplayed by a better performance on a previous day. Didn’t they perform well even today as they lost the match by a mere 3 runs… ??? Can we really doubt the abilities of our team ?

As for me, I enjoy watching the team play for the sheer talent that our boys have. The joy that those special (maybe individual) performances bring. Just like that effortless six which Yuvraj hit first ball. Or the clever consecutive wicket taking deliveries from Harbhajan in the last over ? Or, for that matter, the sweet hits by Yousuf…

Yes, I thoroughly enjoyed them all. It would have been even better if ‘Team India’ had won the match. Well, who wouldn’t like his team to win ?? But just because the team didn’t end up on the victorious side, should we forget the entertainment the boys provided us ???

Well, I would give anything to watch our talented and entertaining bunch of cricketers any day irrespective of the result of a match. They are incomparable to those ‘programmed robots’ which usually the likes of South Africans/English/Australians are. I would rather watch a Sehwag hit 4 consecutive boundaries and get out trying to hit the ball out of the ground, rather than watch a Kallis make a monotonous century.

It’s all about the entertainment, isn’t it ? And our team never fails to entertain.

So let us watch and admire our team for their brilliance of talent which they exhibit once in a while (more consistently these days) rather than crib about results of matches.

And I will always cheer for the fact that our boys are THE BEST.

5 comments:

  1. I feel like ripping them apart because of my own frustration that I experience after the enormous amount of time that we devote to cricket. I keep my personal work aside to read, write and think about cricket. At the end of the day, I fail my exams, do not finish coursework and Team India fails to keep the promise. I am distraught too.

    ReplyDelete
  2. well said! we indians take cricket way too seriously...about time players went bak to bng players, not the country's gods.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The abstract scientist : I guess you completely missed my point there. I never expect 'Team India' to promise for a victory every time they play a match. What I wanted to convey was that I'm thoroughly delighted at the sheer entertainment they provide us with. And I'm satisfied with that.

    Nikita : It's not the players' choice to go back being players instead of being 'Gods' as you put it. It is us the viewers who wont let them be just players. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Agree with the post... we lay too much imp on cricket... treat it higher than religion infact... instead of just looking at it as a sport to be enjoyed! Those guys are just doing their work... like we hv our own work (study/office)... and they have an occasional bad day too just like us... no big deal...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Kaddu : Well, in the times we live in, it's not a bad deal to treat cricket higher than religion... :-)

    And since we get so fanatically emotional regarding matters of religion, no wonder we react similarly to cricket.

    But as the 'God of cricket' himself was stating the other day, does it really help in any way to react as we do regarding the results of an odd couple of matches... ?? Surely doesn't help to enhance the performance of the team in any way.

    ReplyDelete

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...