Yes, India has won and a win of this magnitude is not easy to pack into stock pharses. It is easy to forget today that blue is not the colour of our flag but that of a cold drink brand. That ‘Bleeding Blue’ is really an advertising catchprase coined by a shoe company.
The simple, delicious fact is that we have won and this victory is not just about delirious 80 point headlines in the morning newpapers, or heady moments of bubbling champagne joy or celebrities hopping like kids in VIP stands or a giant exhale of,”We did it!” before the world media.
It is about the traffic jam outside my window where people are dancing on top of their cars, whistling and releasing the angst of 28 years. It is about history that was made today in a billion heads. It is about memories made by ordinary Indians who watched tonight’s final and will recount years from now to their kids and grand kids,”I was there when it happened!” Or “I watched it with my friends and we danced on the couch when Dhoni hit that six.” Families and friends will ask each other for years, “Did you see Dhoni’s eyes that night? Not a trace of doubt or fear! Do you remember how Yuvraj and Harbhajan Singh cried? How we thought we were going to lose once Sachin went?”
I do not remember the 1983 World Cup because we did not have a television but I remember the finals of the 1984/1985 Benson and Hedges World Championship in Australia where Ravi Shastri, cool as an ice-cube, with an unwavering gaze and with sure and steady wrists, took India home with an eight wicket victory over Pakistan. And that Audi 100! And how they all piled up on the bonnet, in the boot, on the roof and went around the stadium drenched in champagne froth! I remember it like it happened yesterday. I remember how my father and I would wake up early to see who had won the toss and how right from the beginning, there was a sense of fate about that championship. As if they were unstoppable. And they were.
This victory despite the unnecessarily crass and ill-timed announcement about the one crore pat on the back of the each of the players was about things bigger than money. For one, it proved that even a God who has been refused a mortal identity by hyperbolic media and hysterical fans for over 21 years needs the shoulders of under sung mortals to be taken on a Parikrama around history.
This victory was about the humility that each cricketer from MS Dhoni onwards displayed. They were not in this game to cock a snook at the rivals or to make a point but to do everything in their power to be a team that stuck together on the peaks and in the muddy trenches. Tonight a nation obsessed with one man shows, learnt that no individual is bigger than the game. And that it is never just about just one man or two. In this championship, it was always about the team huddle. Always.
But even then, this was a night of grace under fire displayed by a man who as a cricket expert said, was not even a part of the Indian cricket team, seven years ago and since then has helmed the team’s ascent to the top of the success pyramid, be it in test cricket, the T-20 championships or now the one day cricket format. This man makes you realise every single time he triumphs that to win is not everything. To win as if as if you deserve it, is.
What Team India displayed today was simply this. You are never bigger than what you do. You serve your craft/game. It does not serve you. You must play your part when you are cornered and must never let the part play you.
Watching MS Dhoni was epiphanic for me personally. To carry the expectations of a billion people to a safe place without crumbling is not just the mark of a great champion but a Zen master. What excuse do most of us have to let ourselves down when all we carry on a day to day basis are our own expectations?
Also India excorcised many of the ghosts that haunted the psyche of my generation with the thought that we as a nation were self-saboteurs, that we choked always under pressure, that we did not have the discipline, the self-confidence or the stamina to be world beaters, that what Kapil Dev and his devils had achieved in 1983 could never be bettered.
Well, after this day, this generation of Indians can believe otherwise because they have just been shown convincingly that India can win if not arrogantly, than unapologetically. This generation will now grow old believing in that seminal line from Kill Bill, ” Its not what you have. Its what you think you have.”
Today was also about a cleansing wave of joy in the veins of every Indian and about a lingering afterthought that if we invest the same passion and commitment in other facets of our nationhood, we can truly be a country that does not need just cricket to feel proud of itself.
And the lesson if any to be learnt today was that in life or in cricket, very few winners are products of happy accidents. They win because they refuse to let one defeat or many, have the last word. Winners start out as lambs, as Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood would say, who then become lions because they choose to “rise and rise again” regardless of where they began and how much they had to struggle to just walk on their knees before they could break into a run. Today was anyone’s contest really…only from the moment the coin was tossed twice in the air, you did not know that anymore. But as it turned out, it really did not matter in retrospect. There was another lesson in there. Does not matter where or how the coin falls. What you do next does.
WOW! A beautiful exposition of what this victory means for India! I’ve a lump in my throat as I read this!
Beautifully expressed. I felt you were expressing my thoughts, only so much more, and so much better.
cricket, patriotism and united india are some of many favours that british rule has given us. When india won cricket world cup 1983, i was just 12 and except for some glimpses i don’t remember much. But one thing i remember very much is the feeling of people. That time was very different and people used to look upto west from fashion, brands, electronics, their way of living to almost every thing. That time we were very much under colonism hangover.. That victory shocked everyone, that was victory with a vengeance, victory with a feeling that yes we can do it, we exist.
This victory more of winning a game what we have been looking for all these years.
We won 1983 world cup wearing white dress or white pull-overs with black v-neck lining where as we won 2011 world cup wearing blue dress. And So is the victory of 1983 written with white chalk on a black board and victory of 2011 written with blue chalk on a black board.