2011 Cricket World Cup – Three Men and a God

Team India wins 2011 World Cricket Cup – Photo (Creative Commons) by Eustaquio Santimano

Indian Cricket Saga – Three Men and a God

Midnight: 2^nd/3^rd April ’11: SMSs, emails, status updates on social networking sites, all carried a similar message – “Yayy!!! – WE have done it. WE are the World Champions. WE are the best!! WE are winners. WE are sexy…”

(Disclaimer – God forbidding, had the match gone the other way round, it would have been “THEY lost. THEY let a billion fans down. THEY made money by fixing matches. THEY are wretched. THEY are ugly.”)

Phew – Welcome to India, the land of colors, exaggeration, opportunism and couch patriotism.

I witnessed India’s second world cup cricket win last night very differently from the way I had done in 1983. In 1983, I was a kid who had fallen asleep out of exhaustion, in the middle of the night, in the living room of  neighbors who were the proud owners of the only coveted Sony color TV in our whole apartment building.

Last night, 3/4ths of a Johnny Walker Black Label could not knock me out as I sat, eagle-eyed in front of my TV set. Biting my nails in anticipation, whistling in glee, trying to add my bit to my nation’s couch potato-ism, I gratefully witnessed that Midas Dhoni was up to his pranks yet again, and was steering his wobbly ship home yet again, as he has been doing for a number of times in the past five years.

Indian Cricket’s Three Extraordinary Gentlemen

Brings me back to my story – of three extraordinary gentlemen who scripted a parable on human leadership for the 21^st century India which goes beyond cricket. And like every story has an underlying soul, this story too had its soul in the form of a certain God who played his stellar role, while standing alongside each of these three generations of leaders.

The first man was an initiator. The second was an integrator. The third was the implementer – And each one of them played a vital role in writing modern India’s sporting history, and also ensuring that this form of sport left the dreary confines of drab, sweaty, uncool stadia & settled down as the greatest TRP puller in the living rooms of 1.25 billion homes.

You had shy housewives out-shriek the most boisterous cheerleaders, and offer cricketing tips to your middle order, while octogenarians and teenagers alike, pitched in with equal fervor, offering their two bit on how Mr. God could have averted missing his 100^th ton on his home ground.

Two Cricket World Cups

I know there will be naysayers who would play this down by coming up with individual doom theories that 2011 saw some of the weakest opposition India has ever seen in World cricket. That it lacked the sheen of the West Indies of the 70s, The Pakistan of the 90s or the Australia of the 2000s. That, save for that rare act of heroism by an Afridi or a Ponting, we actually had a friction-free run against a series of soft opponents.

But then, naysayers will be naysayers. You can’t imagine a world without cynics and skeptics, can you? Still I would thank God that some familiar parasitic culprits like certain ex (non) cricketers and Mandira Bedi were not invited to the studios and that thankfully spared us from their irritating anecdotes and noodle strap sport philosophy So, let them be, as we soak in the spectacle of the decade (ok-decades) – a gang of blue-clad guys, circling around a certain 5’3” tall “God”, and lifting up a 60 Cm tall world trophy.

This is an image which is going to stay in the Indian psyche for years to come. In so many ways, identical to the frozen image of 1983. And yet so different!

Alike because the stage was the same. The opposing teams were the same. However, different because this time around, there were a billion plus eyes glued to their television sets, awaiting the smallest of provocation to condemn this team.

Social media and the internet had already picked their favorites. Numerologists and astrologers had given their non-conclusive double-talk predictions. There were Bollywood nobodies, there were Political somebodies (well – again nobodies, to be honest), bureaucrats, business tycoons, and about 35 thousand common men who flocked to the Wankhade to “cheer” (read “put pressure on”) the playing eleven.

I also understand that billions of rupees had been bet on this match. That people with weak hearts had been advised to stay away from it and hundreds of doctors were kept aside on emergency duty that evening to brace for the occasion. Every TV channel in India scrapped every other news reel and sold itself to this mass hysteria. For once Japan’s tragedy took a back seat. For once Obama’s daily “America…”  speech was canned.

Dhoni’s Men

For once, a few billion Indians around the globe (no matter their time zones) were alert and awaiting Dhoni’s men to give them a reason to cheer and reconsolidate their faith, that finally India’s time has come, that it’s journey has begun – from politics to technology to business to sports.

So,  ALL THAT what must have been going through this 30 year old guy’s head, as he stepped out to represent the unfulfilled dream of a billion idle hearts. Such must have been the pressure on this boy that a majority of images of the Indian team posing with the world cup after the win (most of them housing the insufferable and the grossly irritating Sreesanth) had the captain himself conspicuously absent from the frame. See why I called him the “implementer”? Cometh the big day, you would invariably have this utility captain jumping into the ring & playing his unassuming knock with élan to take his nation home and again disappearing into his almost apologetic nonchalance  thereafter.

Kapil Dev – The Initiator

1983’s images were more about a mustached Kapil Dev lifting the trophy, stunning 700 million self-conscious, inferiority complex ridden brown skins, who were probably too shy to declare it to the world that their country had actually beaten the two-time world champions, fearing being branded as the fluke brigade.

See why I called Kapil Dev an initiator? He was the first one to show us a dream that yes, we can still be at the top of this “gentlemanly” game, beating the “gentlemen” and their visitors on their home ground.

Thank you Kapil Dev for igniting a dream and giving birth to a fabric which would go ahead to become possibly the only fabric uniting this disharmonious nation crisscrossed and split wide open, in the name of religion, caste, color and creed.

And so began India’s tryst with cricket. No other sport ever managed to capture the nation’s imagination and what this Initiator and his men had begun.

Around this time, there was a certain 11-year-old lad growing up in faraway and neglected (cricket-wise) Bengal, aspiring to join the party, break some rules and make some of his own. Twelve years hence, this boy would go ahead to score two back-to-back centuries to announce his arrival at the very Mecca of Cricket.

“Lord Snooty” as he was spitefully nicknamed by his gentlemanly county cricket dressing room mates, started coming of age in the next few years and set a few records of his own, playing calculated knocks alongside the already christened God of Cricket, Sachin Tendulkar.

Be it an act of fate of be it something about this mercurial guy – following India’s disgraceful humiliation in 2000 when the match fixing bomb hit world cricket and Indian cricket’s morale hit a record low with the once big boys like Azharuddin and Jadeja coming under the scanner, the onus fell upon the 28 year old Ganguly to take positions as the Judas goat captain.

Saurav Ganguly – The Integrator

His task? To resurrect the pride of a near billion fans, build up a unit of newcomers (mostly) and try and hang around on the world stage till we got our act together. Three years down the line, Ganguly and his brat pack (they were too rowdy to be called a proper team), went ahead,  demolishing opposition after opposition to reach the biggest stage of world cricket  –  only to fall prey to complacence and early celebration in the big final of the World cup 2003.

But yes, by now the integrator’s job was done. He had managed to tip the scales and the mindsets of a billion people. Suddenly, India was not an also-ran, fluke unit any more. 1983’s party spoilers had become giant killers in 2003. You had a band of world beaters in the form of the new boys in blue, aka Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh, Virender Sehwag, Zahir Khan and others who would go ahead and convincingly make mincemeat of every mighty opposition, having battled personal giants in their own lives in these years, and having emerged victorious (love you Yuvraj for yet again proving them wrong and showing what you are worth, belly or no belly).

So when at the beginning of the match, Dhoni acknowledged that for the first time, team India was not going in as underdogs, possibly that was a silent tribute to the gentleman sitting in the commentary box, now wearing a golden necktie and having taken his position as the youngest entrant to the pensioner’s club of Indian cricket, sitting like a proud parent, witnessing his protégées fulfill his unfulfilled dream.

So, thank you, Sourav Ganguly. Thank you for having taken off your shirt in that Nat West finals and announcing the arrival of Brown Skin dominance in this pale-skin sport, which went ahead to consolidate the faith of not just India, but the entire sub-continent.

Dhoni – Master Magician

Coming to Dhoni. I used to consider myself as somewhat of an expert on human behavior, especially when it came to analyzing July borns (being one myself). So I always see a pattern and logic in the behaviors of a Gavaskar or Ganguly or a Harbhajan or a Jayasuria, each of who are people with sinusoidal career paths and ruled by hearts rather than heads. But Dhoni has been an enigma ever since I have started studying him.

Dhoni is too cool to be a July born. He is too un-readable, unpredictable and composed. No wonder I took time to understand him, and come around to respect him. What was my cynical conclusion in branding him as just another fortunate guy, has, over the years changed as he went ahead proving me wrong time and again.  And I have learned my lesson.

So last evening when most of India had begun it s write-off activity on this guy (We Indians are great at writing people off at the slightest provocation), I was among the handful who still felt that like a master magician, he would have saved his best for the big night. And he did not let me down. He proved once again why  Dame Fortune still favors only the brave.

Here is a large-hearted and a courageous leader of men who doesn’t hide in the dressing room when the going gets tough. He pads up and goes out to get on top of the tough times. No wonder, I have now begun to rate him as the best captain ever to have led India. Sorry Sourav – The cricket lover in me wins over the Bong in me.

Yesterday, Dhoni delivered against something which has been the historic Achilles heel of Indian sports – big stage bumps. He also overcame another of India’s biggest pull backs – early celebrations and applauding second bests. Sports should never salute second bests (as they had done in 2003, by going crazy over the losing side) because that dilutes the magnificence of a winner.

So,  full marks to Dhoni and to his leadership which peaked just when it mattered. It also speaks volumes of his large-heartedness as a leader that he let his team go wild in front of the flashlights and let Sachin soak in his much-deserved and much delayed moment of glory, while he himself slipped into the background (probably signing another few crores worth of endorsement deals on the sly! OK – that was pun intended!).

So, thank you Dhoni. For cleaning up the newspapers & TV channels on the 3^rd of April 2011 from the usual muck about corrupt politicians, gory tales of rape and plunder which infuse a daily venomous energy drain on us average Indians. At least, you gave us a Sunday of positivity. Of hope. Of a reason to be happy without feeling guilty or superstitious.

And finally, the God. Talking about Sachin, what can I write or say about this great man that has not been written or spoken already by experts ( and not so experts), world over, in the past 21 years.

Sachin Tendulkar – the God of Cricket

I remember reading a newspaper article a few weeks back, on the emergence of the new India and the emergence of Sachin Tendulkar as two simultaneous global forces. Maybe that’s the best way to describe and offer a tribute to the greatest sportsman of our generation.

Over the past two decades, India has gone from being an obscure,  creepy nation (as perceived by the west) to one of the top few global economies, and which has today reached a platform where it calls shots on many forums, a feat unimaginable 20 years back.

And somewhere when this huge, diverse and complex metamorphosis was happening, this gentle giant was at work, as he brought cheer to a billion hearts in the darkest of hours, who united us as a nation year after year as we sat cheering in front of our television sets, shouting ourselves hoarse at his exploits as he went about realizing unfulfilled fantasies of a deprived, divided nation.

Even God would not have dared to deprive this man of lifting this trophy. So thank you Sachin Tendulkar, for being you, for being born in India, during our lifetimes, and not anywhere else on this planet. The fact that you missed your century in the finals, only proves that even Gods take their time in coming out with their best creations. This also keeps your task unfulfilled and keeps us in greedy anticipation of a few more years of Sachin Tendulkar. Why stop at 100 ?

Why not 125 …?

(As a footnote, I would like to add that the above article was to try and bring out the leadership essence in Indian cricket over the past three decades. I have not included greats like Gavaskar or Vengsarkar or Amarnath, for the simple reason that it was not fitting in contextually, and this in no way takes away their contribution to Indian cricket)