1984. That's the year I was born in. More than a year after India had won its last and only (till yesterday) cricket World Cup. My dad is not a cricket fan. Never was. And so he has no stories to tell me of India's winning effort in 1983. I don't hold that against him. He had more important things to take care of. He was busy working hard to give me the life that I enjoy today. Cricket didn’t find time and space in his growing up years.
My earliest memories of cricket are surprisingly vivid. In the days before cable television became a common feature, on the 21 inch color TV that we had at home we would get only two channels. DD National & DD Metro. And I remember how I used to hate watching a bunch of men dressed in white play a game I didn't find interesting. DD National used to broadcast all India matches played in India then. They would play for many days on the trot, thus denying me of my dose of entertainment on television.
It was 1993 when I first began to watch the game and like it. I was beginning to completely understand it. It was the World Cup in sub-continent though when I become a convert. Primarily because of one man. I was your typical irrational fan devoted solely to one hero. I watched cricket only for Tendulkar. And when he got out I would switch the TV. For I knew that with him the hope was gone. The team after him will cave in. And more often than not it did.
Watching cricket through those years in 1990s was delightful and frustrating at the same time. Delightful because of Sachin who aroused motherhood in every woman/girl by his boyish charm and great adulation in every man/boy through his batting in the middle. As much as it was joyful to watch Sachin it was painful to watch Team India. We lost more often than they won. The great moments are so few that I can almost count all of them on the fingers of my one hand. Hero Cup 1993. World Cup Q/F 1996. Sharjah 1999. The blame though lies with Tendulkar. At least partly. Team India wasn't good enough to win regularly but in Tendulkar we had a batsman who was better than the best. He made us believe. And when he failed the hope just evaporated. Cricket is a team sport. But he didn't make it appear like that. Carrying the burden of a nation on his young shoulders.
I was in love though. All through those years. With cricket. With one man. While education still remained the priority at home, I started sneaking on my study time to play, watch and read cricket. I would shut my room and for hours shadow bat and bowl in front of the mirror. My parents were under the impression that I was studying inside. How proud they must have felt that their eldest son was capable of concentrating so hard on his studies without once breaking for a visit to the toilet or to eat a quick snack. Inside my room though I was busy dreaming up match scenarios and always scoring the winning runs or taking important wickets. And I'd always try and play my strokes like the way Tendulkar played them. Even when I was batting with him at the other end in these made-up matches. Together we would chase down daunting totals on a fifth day pitch at Perth. We even won the World Cup once by hitting the last ball for a six over long-on.
By the time I was in 8th standard I was convinced that I want to be a cricketer. My parents after being initially adamant to not allow me to join cricket coaching because studies were more important, later relented. As my cricket graph started going up the education one nosedived. Better part of 8th & 9th standard was spent day dreaming and sometimes working towards my naive ambition of becoming a cricketer for India. One very peculiar thing about this urge was that it become stronger each time India lost. It was as if I felt that the country needed me. To go out there and bat and bowl and win matches for her (India). Soon the results started showing. Of my exams at school. In course of just two years, I had gone from being a brilliant student to an often average and sometimes above average student. The year of board exams was upon me. All the cricket had to stop. At once. I rebelled but to no avail. Sanity was brainwashed to me. In the months of December and January when I was at the business end of my preparation for the most important exams of my life (I was made to believe this then which I now realise was such a blatant lie) India was busy getting thrashed to pulp down under. It was the series in Australia in which we lost all the matches we played. The coincidence of these two events, one personal and other national, couldn't have been more surprising.
Every minute I spent studying I felt I was doing the nation a huge disservice. I almost felt like a traitor. In those days my love for cricket and my nationalistic fervour were inexorably linked. And just when I felt I was cheating on cricket, cricketers cheated on me. On the entire nation. On all the lovers of this beautiful game. They sold the game. Their soul. The nation's pride. For a few extra bucks. I clung on. To the honesty of one man who had been a hero to a 12 year old boy. Englishman Ian Peebles once said, ‘there are no cricketers like those seen through 12-year-old eyes’. That’s true. I realize now.
And then at the turn of the century Team India started its resurgence. Fresh blood. Eager bodies. They formed the core of the new team post the cleansing. At the same time I entered my youth. The years of one’s life when the world is an oyster. It is a time when everything seems possible. The team began to win from situations which were earlier considered hopeless. Each teenager believes that his generation can change the world. For the better. It was that kind of enthusiasm in this team. Each time the team was down a raised hand was found asking to be counted. The team didn't win everything. In fact the ghosts of 90s visited pretty often. Yet in each stumble also we made progress.
They say that with knowledge and experience comes rationality. Yet I can write pages describing moments in last eleven years when emotions held sway over logic. I stepped out of the (school) uniform when I entered college in 2000. The change wasn't just cosmetic. It was symbolic of the dreams within. Colourful than monchromatic. The sort that make you take risks without fearing failure. Those were the years of bravado. And yesterday it was that one feature that was most abundantly on display.
Yes yesterday night it all reached culmination. 2nd April 2011. Mark that date. Team India won the World Cup. My team won the biggest price that there is in the game. They won the cup that counts. And my man was there. Paraded around the ground, this time on shoulders of younger men. The baton has been passed. But not without making a contribution which no statistics can quantify. No words can describe. Success is funny beast. It makes the effort to get there taste sweeter only in retrospect.
At the most opportune moment words desert you. That’s the limitation of language. I still cannot articulate completely what I felt yesterday. Or what I am feeling right now about yesterday. Yet I know one thing that when my kids are born I will repeat to many times over to the point they are bored stories about yesterday. About the last 45 days. About the last eleven years. About a lifetime spent so far watching and loving cricket. About one man who is a hero to their father.
