That just ain’t cricket

When I drove home last Friday, the traffic was unprecedentedly heavy. There were cars packed with earnestly talking passengers, buses were crowded and you could see commuters sardined into trains as they passed overhead on the various bridges we went under. And my driver was cheerful albeit cautious, citing statistics and caveats about whether the Indian team would win the match at the World Cup in the West Indies. People I knew planned to sit up all night to watch television, some hosted parties, others cut talking to their loved ones short, a few cancelled trips and took leave from work. Everyone was excited, agog, awaiting…

But Saturday morning was a different scenario. I woke up to scan the headlines in the four city papers we get and found that the results had not yet been reported. I will find out when the driver comes in, I thought, but then Father checked the Internet and told me that India had lost, rather ignominiously and humiliatingly. Almost blasphemously, I was glad. Along with various friends who understood and agreed with my point of view, I wanted our team to be booted out of the tournament, to take time off to figure out just what they were doing in the exalted space they occupied in the psyche of the general Indian populace and get down to earning it once more.

I am not a cricket fan, neither do I even pretend to like, understand or be intelligent about the game. But I am aware and informed enough about its various aspects, the players’ names and profiles and, most of all, about the basics of human nature. I have nothing at all against the cricket players we have in this country and know how talented some of them are. However, I have also seen them growing too fast, too suddenly, from mere minnows (a favourite word this World Cup) to arrogant, high-handed, overblown and puffed up men too aware of their importance and all too unaware of its transience.

Which is what almost everyone is like. It takes a rare personality to deal with the fallout of fame, a very unusually strong man or woman who will stay the same, no matter what changes life and its little conveniences. There are all the perks that work to turn the head, the psyche and the character around to something not so nice or so human – the sycophants, the gossip media, the groupies, the money, the adulation, the headlines, the endorsements, the fans and much more. And a perfectly good personality is ruined.

Does it happen to everyone? Obviously not. Those who begin with a certain degree of privilege don’t need the money or the name or the edge that keeps them looking for those. Those with a supportive and level-headed family can do it, too – not lose themselves in the clamour for a new identity. All it takes is a little self-respect, a little dignity, a little self-consciousness and a knowledge that only the hard work that got you there can keep you there.

Maybe that is what the Indian cricket team needs to relearn.