The path to Cricketing glory - Part 2

The road to cricketing glory – Part 2

It was 11:30 pm on the night of 2^nd April and India had become the reigning World Champion in the cricketing world. The term “World Champion” still sends a delicious shiver through my body and has me smiling like a nut every time I hear it. On that night, after the presentation ceremony, watched by millions of people around the world, I was drunk on adrenalin and excitement and was trudging out of the stadium, with no real plan as to where we would be going or what we will be doing. I felt a strong hand on my shoulder and turned to look at the concerned look on my husband’s face. I felt the roles had definitely been reversed and did not understand what was bothering him. He just gestured ahead and said, “In case we get lost in this crowd when we get out of the stadium; meet me at our favorite spot on Marine Drive”. Those words hardly registered, as I was in a flashback mode, going over every exciting second of the day in my mind.

I spent the first few minutes after the match started to get to know the various players on both sides. It was not easy because the team kept shifting positions after every few balls. When I expressed my frustration about this to my husband, he patiently explained why that was necessary and then even more patiently asked me to shut up and let him watch the game. Having hit a road block there, I decided to concentrate on a few balls. But the minute I did that a boundary was hit and I suddenly remembered my resolve to not see the pitch at all during the match if India had any hope of winning. So, I started watching the crowd, the fielders, the dressing room – any direction but the pitch and the ball. Which is why, if anyone to this day asks me how it was to watch the match and what I thought about some spectacular delivery or some outstanding stroke, I have a blank look because I did not see any of that. But yes, I think I gained a lot more than I lost owing to this weird decision. As I focused on the rest of the fielders, I realized the ferocious focus with which these young men played the game which somehow gets lost when we watch them on an impersonal television set. The Indian fielding contingent, led by Raina, Kohli and Yuvraj were literally breathing down the necks of the Lankan batsmen. It was the kind of feral intensity that may rob many great men of their courage and clear thinking. I could feel that these men were working with a single minded determination, cutting out the noise, the loud cheers and the music and focusing only on the ball and the bat. Nothing else existed in that moment and it felt like the only raison d’être for them was to stop the ball.

Every few minutes, I would try and see where some of my favorite cricketers were standing. It was easy to pick out Dhoni, in his keeper’s gear standing behind the wickets. But, to me Dhoni stood out more because of the absolute command on the game he expressed. Even from a distance, I could feel this bright young man’s mind ticking every second. Many people tell me how astute he is with field placements and plays the game with a street smartness that only exists in the small towns of this country. All this and much more is apparent in the way he planned the game and chose his tactics, ball after ball. But all this was done with a child like abandon, living completely in the now and not sparing any thought to what was and what will be. I think I fell a little in love then and was sure my husband would not mind when I saw him scream with gay abandon – “Dhoni, Dhoni”.

My eyes then searched for the man, to whom the stand I was sitting in that day was dedicated – Sachin Tendulkar. It is hard to miss Sachin because he is the most active player on the field.  If I fell a little in love in Dhoni, I fell deeply in awe with Sachin. It was amazing to me that this cricketing great, after 21 years of playing this game, still felt so involved and engaged in every aspect of it. Seeing him walk up to young and inexperienced players after every ball, giving them advice, pepping them up and just spreading a sense of calm in the team with his very presence made me realize why the millions in this country idolized him. If Sachin was all over the filed Sehwag stayed in his position, seemingly lackadaisical and uninvolved, but swooping in like an eagle for some of the most difficult matches, not missing a beat.

This seemed to have encouraged the fielding trio of Raina, Kohli and Yuvraj to have a healthy competition amongst them of who will stop the maximum number of runs. To me they signified the essence of this team that played for each other. When any one of them would stop a single or field exceptionally well, the other two would run over, pat the person on the back and praise him for a job well done. I was glad that I was watching all this happen in the sidelines of the game because these are visuals that the TV cameras would never beam into my home. It is sights such as this that made me understand the deep rooted tenet that these men played for. When I watched all the post match interviews and heard each team member say again and again that they played for Sachin and each other, I knew exactly what they meant and how they had gone about it.

I drowned myself in the atmosphere of the stadium that smelled of chips, Pepsi and the soaking sweat of all the supporters. Every wicket was celebrated with frenzy. Every boundary was danced for. Every run was cheered with such abandon that the batsmen became confused if they had taken a single or hit a boundary. I don’t think I sat for the nine hours that the game was played, remaining on tenterhooks and going mad with the cheering and the shouting. It is this sound of “Jeetaga bhai jeetega Hindustan jeetega” that reverberated in my head as I made my way down the staircase, drunken with the joy of winning. It turned out that my husband was unnecessarily concerned. I realized, only in Mumbai will people line up to not just to enter but also to exit the stadium. I think I was jostled between a crowd of close to 1000 people trying to get home, but not once was I scared or touched inappropriately. Everywhere I looked, I saw happy, excited faces who had enjoyed the day’s cricket and carried with them the memory of a lifetime. I was also surprised that in a country as diverse as India, the crowd that I saw at the stadium seemed like a largely homogenous set of upper middle class, educated, well behaved, working men and women and I realized with the base price of the ticket itself being at INR 35,000 the common man could have never been able to afford watching the match live.

But, it was not until I stepped out of the stadium did I realize the common man would not be left out of the party of a lifetime. The night that India became a World Champion, Cricket became the greatest unifier in the country. As the crowds from the stadium spilled out on to Marine Drive, they met the crowds of people who had been watching the match at home or on the big screen TV set up on the promenade and had decided to dance the night away, marking the moment history was made. I saw young boys and girls with the tri color in their hands, sitting on the bonnets of their cars or riding on their bikes, shouting with joy, telling anyone who would care to listen that India had done it. I saw older couples, walking hand in hand across the promenade taking in the scenes of this impromptu party, their faces shining with excitement and tears brimming from their eyes. My husband and I joined these crowds on the promenade, walking along with them, waiting to catch a glimpse of the team bus, hoping to see the men who had become heroes and champions in the space of a few hours. I have no idea for how long we walked or how far we got, because we kept getting stopped every few minutes by complete strangers who wanted to hug us. It felt like we had won our independence all over again. People had suddenly become large hearted and all the differences that kept us at each other’s throats seemed to have dissolved in a well of emotion and happiness. A taxi driver found us walking along some of the alleys beside Marine Drive and offered to give us a lift home. He refused to take any money from us when we reached saying that today the trip was on him.

All along the route, we saw people from every walk of life, out on the streets celebrating this victory like a war had been won. Only time will tell if a war had actually been won, but I feel a true awakening happened that night. India came to realize that 15 men, from ordinary backgrounds and nothing much to their name but tremendous confidence and self-belief had achieved a feat that no one thought would be possible. This filled the rest of the nation with the hope that if they can why can’t we. I feel it is this confidence that has driven Anna Hazare and his men to fast unto death fighting for corruption. I am not sure how this fight will end, but it surely is fuelled by the sentiment that was awakened in the Indian populace the night we became World Champions. I only hope that we are able to hold on to this feeling of invincibility, euphoria and utter confidence, because like the Men in Blue, we don’t have much more than this to fight with, but like they proved to us, these might just be the right weapons to make us World Champions in the truest sense of the word.