On April 2nd
2011, when Mahendra Singh Dhoni hit that memorable six to help India
clinch their 2nd world cup
title the entire nation erupted in joy and went into a festive frenzy that
continued for days. Many (including me), also claimed that now that we have
seen our heroes achieve this momentous feat, there is nothing more that we want
from them and even if we don’t win the world cup again for a long time we would
go on to cherish and marvel over this momentous feat for the rest of our lives.
But public memory is short lived and appetite for more is atrociously greedy,
hence as the 2015 world cup approached the excitement and the nervousness to
retain the cup turned overwhelmingly imminent.
Though,
India’s dismal show in Australia both in the test series and the tri-series
dampened the spirits and expectations to a good extent but promotional
campaigns like ‘wontgiveitbak’ and ‘maukamauka’ did well to keep the
general euphoria among the masses intact. Given the friendly format, I
personally felt India would reach the Quarters but due to their not-so glorious
recent form would struggle to proceed any further. In a nutshell, my
expectations from team India before the world cup were not very high, not just
because of our on field form but even due to the fact that we have fairly
recently won the cup. And I didn't expect our team to be so good to have
clinched back to back world cup trophies, some might term it as high degree of
pessimism but I consider it as being realistic to what we are truly capable of
doing J.
Till date,
92’ world cup happens to be my favorite world cup, although India did
miserably in that edition but the memories of that edition are still fresh and
edged out in my mind. Waking up early (mostly to see India tottering J), the excitement of newly
introduced colored jerseys and the amazement of watching then greats in the
action, well and truly made that world cup very very special. India has gone on
to perform much better than that in almost all subsequent editions, barring
2007 but statistically none has been as prolific has 2015. Although, we won the
trophy in 2011 but we have never been so clinical in our performances as we
were this time around. 100% win record in the league stages, our bowlers bowling
out the opposition every single time and an unmatched, impeccable record in the
power play overs. These feats talk volumes of our rare consistent performance
on the field and it shocked one and all as our performances leading up to the
world cup were very contrasting. So this in all ways was a remarkable turn
around and gave over a billion people a strong sense of HOPE.
Despite
these string of surprises every Indian fan somewhere had that inkling that it won’t
go on forever and inevitability will certainly strike sometime soon, though
later the better was the unanimous hope J. In fact, I was literally praying
for a loss sometime before the knock outs so that we stay in check and avoid
such a debacle in the knockouts. Howsoever weird it might sound but I always
had this strange feeling in mind that we are not the Australia’s of the world
to lift the world cup being undefeated throughout the tournament and neither
are we so strong to have won back to back world cups like the West Indies’ and
Australias’ of the past. Nevertheless, I was hoping that all my negative
thoughts go wrong and we go on to do the unexpected and with Dhoni around that
feeling of anything is possible was
ever so imminent J.
So what had
to happen happened and a billion prayers and streak of superlative performance
failed to take us through to our second consecutive world cup final. It was
very sad to have lost the way we lost and there was an expected sense of frustration
and angst against our heroes of the last 6 weeks. With electronic and social media
being so very powerful and emphatic these days, people went on to indulge in high
degree of Team India bashing, almost as if we have been knocked out in the
first round itself without giving any fight. Given our passion and love for the
game, to an extent this outrage is justifiable but burning effigies, bringing
in personal lives of the cricketers and targeting the WAGs is utterly stupid. Nobody
plays to lose, certainly not those who are on the field representing India, in
fact nobody wants to win it more than guys donning the Indian Jersey. So if we
can’t give them their due respect and support while they lose we don’t have the
right to go gaga over their victories either.
All in all
for me it was an engaging and an entertaining world cup that made me feel proud
of my team despite its semi-final exit. The excitement and the euphoria that
started building up from the 1st match just kept on rising with
every match. To top it all the maukamauka ads and following every match by
waking up early in the morning and rejoicing/lamenting every moment over the
whats-app with my best pals just made it all the more thrilling and memorable. A
world cup win would have been the perfect icing on the cake but nevertheless for
me the heroes of those six weeks continue to be the heroes despite a bad day in
office in the semis.
Well done
Team India, you have still made us all proud!
--
kin…
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