My team, My country, My world cup

When India meets Pakistan in a world cup final, the contest, for all the hype and the nerves, never goes down to who blinks first, for that rarely matters. Most often it is who blinks most. And true to its word, amidst all the flurry of eyelashes batting against each other, in a match that had phases ranging from ‘excellent start’ to ‘defendable total’ to ‘Imran on the rampage’ to ‘cant lose from here’ to ‘where did the huge gap between runs to defend and balls to bowl dissappear?”, it was a oversight by the last man standing for the losers, that his improvised stroke ended up in the hands of the fielder. Obviously, Misbah Ul Haq never knew (he didn’t get the sms I received yesterday) that in ‘every corner of the world, there is a malayalee’!

It is ironical that India has won a ‘world cup’ at the only instance in living memory (I wasn’t around when we won it before) in which the team wasn’t sent with the fanfare, with cricket bats autographed by the players of the 1983 coup, with the team selection played out as ‘predict the team’ contests by the newspapers in advance and over-debated on news channels, with Pepsi ads and its access to the team dressing room. With Shah Rukh Khan, Kareena Kapoor, and Saif Ali Khan trying to become one of the 'men in blue', with Shankar Mahadevan claiming allegiance with his corporate sponsored songs. with a good luck dinner by the President of the country, and with thousands of loyal fans waving goodbyes to the aeroplanes in which the team flew away till it disappeared into the skies. Oh why, it wasn’t even a World cup till India actually beat Australia in the semi final. Till then, it was just the T20 world cup, if you can get the difference!

Ironical indeed that even without being in the disastrous form the team was in, approaching the last few legitimate world cups, India wasn’t even counted among the favourites. The event was so insignificant in public perception that three of those who would make any Indian all-time cricket eleven, opted out of the tournament citing without really giving reasons, and none of us really seemed to mind! So insignificant that in the first week of the tournament, the media was more obsessed with the non-playing captain’s resignation than the playing captain’s strategies.

But all that was to change. Change so drastically that the pretty young things that make up CNBC TV18s newsroom spoke, more often than not, in cricket-language on the day of the final, the day after the final, and pretty much the day after the day after the final (We’ll have to wait till tomorrow to see what they have for the day after that). All their newsreaders wore Indian team jersey’s to commemorate the victory, and Mythali Mukherjee made up, atleast in shrieking, for Mandira Bedi’s absence, atleast to the few geeks who are subjected to her all day. (oh btw, did I tell you I get to watch TV at office all day) Even ‘the Hindu’ set aside almost half of its front page for the picture of the Indian team with the trophy. I cant even imagine how the Malayala Manorama would have commemorated its favourite son being the one to hammer the last nail in the Paki coffin, even if that was the only noteworthy thing he did all day.

So India has won a world cup (lets say I don’t mind calling it that)! And boy, aren’t we proud? But should we really be? Did it really matter that the Indian flag being carried around with so called ‘pride’ by females in sports bras (mind you, sponsored by India’s biggest company)? Did we mind - I ask you again, DID WE– mind that the Indian National anthem was not played completely to tune at the start of the match (In case you heard the notes of the first ‘Jaya He’)

Well on the other hand, India has just won a world cup. And in all probability, it wont again, unless the ICC comes up with yet another new format of cricket, and catches our media sleeping. So lets just savour the moment, pretend to own the team, (of course, thanking the BCCI for not depriving us of that pleasure), ignore miniscule issues such as what tune the national anthem is played in, and feel proud to be an Indian. In true Indian fashion!