we have reached the open sea; with some charts, and the firmament
Before the game I said that I was quite agnostic about the outcome of the final. At the time I meant it.
I can’t say I love the Indian team any more. Part of it is the spirit of the age. Part of it is them. Part of it is me. When you have seen your heroes fail so much and so often, it doesn’t compensate when a decidedly less angelic generation starts to reap the benefits of growing up with the same chip on the shoulder as you have. Indian cricket is flush today — with money, success, political power, and all the consequences thereof. As @sidvee said in a different context before the tournament, it feels like we have so much already. What does a win matter when the most brilliant (to you) cricketers in the world never won a Test series in South Africa?
There was one complicating factor, and that was Sachin, who usually makes everything simple. Wouldn’t I want him to score his hundredth century in a World Cup victory at his home ground? I wasn’t sure. One: I’m long past caring about his records. Two: nothing, not even another World Cup final loss, would make a difference to everything he has done. And with the privilege of proximity I can say that three: if I had to pick a home ground for him, it would be Shivaji Park, or even the Brabourne, instead the relatively unbeautiful Wankhede, where we once booed him. And yet, having said all that, didn’t he deserve a chance at all this? It didn’t matter to me, but surely it mattered to him?
In the end, it turned out to be less harrowing and less alienating. The match was so very good, and they were so very poised. Sometimes, competence is a kind of grace. When there is no one who remembers to applaud their opponents for a game well played; when there is no one to restrain their post-match cheering for the sake of the runners up who are putting up a brave face alongside; when even Mahendra Singh Dhoni forgets that triumph and disaster are impostors to be treated alike; when he goes up to receive a trophy in a Nike vest — then brisk professionalism is the best salve for amour propre. “I am there,” Suresh Raina said before the semi-final. I realised that an ‘I am there’ team is its own virtue.
A while ago I wrote a post for the Run of Play about the experience of watching 2 am Champions League in India, and said
“In these patches of the night, the world can seem very big. Even as a fellow Milan tragic in, say, Tokyo, is stirring awake, half-wondering how to get through the day without encountering match results until they have a chance to watch their recording, even as someone in Karachi is trying not to boggle about how she stayed up until two forty-five in the morning to watch a stupid match, even as the Pato fans in São Paolo have given up on ending their workday as long as no one at work changes the channel, being alone at this hour can make you feel like the last person in the world. In this soft city, the parts obscured in the time-lapse rhythms of daytime, the light flickering from an LED screen maroons you on a very small island. In the end, regardless of the game’s outcome, you are left with a sensation not unlike waking up in the moment before dawn. Someone somewhere must be dreaming this.”
Saturday night was the very opposite. As Wankhede stadium and Bombay and India burst into wild laughter and fireworks around me, as people filled the lanes of my quiet neighbourhood whooping, as friends hopped into cars and drove through packed streets in a bizarro traffic jam in which everyone was only too happy to participate, the world seemed far, far too small.
As a child I wanted nothing more from cricket than for my team to win a match for India, and thereby me. As I watched this team, these ungilded men of my generation win the World Cup — the World Cup! — last night, I knew that they didn’t win it for me or the India we sometimes inhabit together. Perhaps no Indian team will ever win it for me again.
But maybe they really did win it for the heroes, and the failures, they and I grew up watching. Maybe they meant it when they hoisted Sachin Tendulkar on their shoulders and ran around on their victory lap, and made it look easy. I think it is in Madame Bovary that Flaubert writes, ‘We must not touch our idols; the gilt sticks to our hands.’ On Saturday night for the first time I realised that is exactly why we do it.
