India has lost the ICC WORLD CUP FINAL 2023; an ineluctable deepening despair that will
seethe our hearts for a few weeks and then the normal ‘move-on’ panjandrum will take on a
rotation. The country is in grief and finding what made the goose loose its eggs. ‘Loss’ of any
kind is an entity in ‘perpetuity’; the mulish face of it looks staggaredly at us, it’s
inevitable—we can see it, but drowned in the flamboyancy of irretraceable ‘springs & spoils’
it takes time to admire its sarky scupper.
This is exactly what happened with India during the ICC World Cup Final 2023. They were all
disported on the field like infallible shoots making it seem like a doodle to covert the ‘title’
dejure. However, in the end, all that was left to be seen was the dilly-dally feet missing
catches, and a glare of prominent leg byes. The aflutter of remorse and hollowness also left
the entire country poker-faced.
’12 saal se World Cup nahin jeeta’ (not won a world cup for the last 12 years)—one of the
devilry advertisements makes the loss in the last three World Cups look an innuendo of
fallow and flaccid. Another ad is a ribald on the ‘time factor’ where ‘Rishabh’ wakes up the
captain ‘Rohit’ before the alarm rings fledgling to practice more—‘World Cup hai, extra to
banta hai’. Although, we look at these appurtenances as an aggrandizement of a cricketer’s
capability, albeit a stentorious burden of pomposity adds on. Shahrukh Khan too blows an
arabesque of
“Tere andar ka har shaq mitainge” (We will erase every doubt inside your mind)
“Toofan hai, cup to hum hi uthainge” (We are thunder. The cup is ours this time)
Look at the fragility of these statements. Doesn’t it create a batter of emotions, even if they
still lie unawakened? Is it really possible that the same nexus of intertwined ‘derring do’ may
find only a ravine of confidence and conceit. It is also capable of making you feel maudlin or
stew your own grime. All this ‘drama-dhols’ are evasive to reality. The cricketer might think,
‘if this is the real me and my real aim’? What if I faulter and don’t live up to the
desideratum? In the apocalypse of loss, all this would ring like a white noise putting an end
to the ‘white ball’ career.
Let’s take an example of the Indian Captain ‘Rohit Sharma’. The pitch of life was dark for him
during his childhood. As a kid, he stayed away from his parents because of his father’s low
income. He joined the cricket camp in 1999 with the money sponsored by his Uncle. In India,
many like our captain are from a poor background and frequently dream of joining the

‘Indian Cricket’. As a hapless and harangued stands outside the temple to find solace in
GOD, for every Indian, cricket is no less than a silent weaver of broken threads. The
camouflage of it for the young and unattended may serendipitously turn water into wine,
and one day you may find one of them sweating on the pitch of International cricket. The
pressure is immense! Already many have cut the salver of shallow living and risen to the
high-rise certitude. They don’t want to drive in a rebarbative gear.
No other profession than cricket magnifies the intrusion of dispelled emotions and an
invidious acclaim to one’s defeat, prescriptive to be judged by millions, ornamental in its
victory and proscriptive in its loss.
Opinions and more opinions here don’t take time to change, thus ambiguities arise. It’s how
the flavor of cricket has been! If India would have won the World Cup, it would have cut the
edge to fit the corner stone but now the et seq.—unpalatable paranoia of ‘who will be the
next coach and captain’, and the last-ditch to play more International Cricket thereby sets in
to sew the ignominious stitch.
Why do we act as blurry mascots of impassable frequency?
The colloquial ‘awaaz’ in the ‘thums-up’ advertisement curated ‘Jadeja’ as a misinformed
‘batter’ and ‘baller’. Why be sluggish and make him the torn hole of ripped jeans? The
same rhythm in the ad gives an importunate hope; a prodigal fusillade Jadeja snipping the
butt often with his fierce deliveries but the same prosody looks faint-hearted during a loss
as if it were euphuism.
The cause here is not to misinterpret derivative! Let’s leave the ‘white ball’ aficionados to
their own rigorous pursuit of achieving the goal that they define for themselves rather than
the media and intolerant creating pre-conceived prophesies.
The swollen ankles , ruptured ligaments, the faulty shoulder slip or the bruises, the sky-
jumps like Virat aimed during his ‘50 th centuries mark’ washing the air beneath his feet, the
eyes that wander for the perfect knock and the ball that glistens on the coarse bed of rock
does not need salutations that change to every harsh blow of wind.
Creating a big-hype could turn out to be distressing and demoralizing in the end. The
‘inner awaaz’ matters more; let the ‘white ball’ champions live & play their ‘idea of win’
bereft of chastened profligacy.