Such is life ... its the morning after the 2023 ODI WC final, where the serial champions yet again took the crown on which the utterly dominant home team almost had their hands on. Its the morning after the final and you wake up early morning at 5am as has been the case for last 6 weeks. As you pick up the phone to check the score to get a sense of the action in that day's cricket match you flinch as you realize its all over and once again its all over without the cup of joy. A familiar feeling for kids of 90s who habitually used to wake up early in the morning to watch the men in yellow/green overwhelm us. Multiple decades has passed, you are much older and are in another corner of the world where you wake up super early in the morning to watch action unfolding at home ( India).
For the last 6 weeks, early mornings were spent this way - half awake from 4-4:30 am onwards checking score on cricbuzz, sometimes following ball by ball action for a bit. Then slowly getting out of bed by 5 am to go and make filter coffee and then spend another hour or so watching the match on TV while parallely catching up with all the online chatter around the match so far. By then a small college WhatsApp group will be active with match related chat. My current job as of now is fully remote with lot of folks I work with on west coast of US which means I can start my day/work a bit later than usual. So when cricket happens in India its much easier to follow it as you slowly start the work day. I'm no longer a big fan of ODI format and feel it has lost its relevance except for bigger tournaments. However even the sceptic in me had to admit that this WC was super fun and I found myself watching the action lot more than I ever expected.
One thing that came with World Cup viewing this time was the hope, it gradually kept increasing with every match that Team India played somewhat like some of the past campaigns ( 2011, 2019) but unlike in the past there was no defeats to recalibrate the expectations to allow room for caution or to ground you to reality as the hopes soar. Even back in 2003 - with a team had so many large gaping holes we had high hopes of a win when the title round against reigning top dogs materialized. We just hoped our talismanic wunderkid/man plays another of those epic knocks to cover lot of the gaps/holes in the team and pulls us across. It was not to be, we - the Indian fans - learnt that day that you can beat most teams by putting on a good consistent show but when you face a mighty all conquering juggernaut who have all bases covered its very hard to consistently deliver your A game across both innings. Sooner than later something will crumble and they will overwhelm you, a lesson repeated to another unbeaten Indian team in 2015 when they squared off against a mighty titan. All those lessons were painfully absorbed and 2019 was explained away to tough conditions / top order collapse / Dhoni falling short by an inch or so from a miracle.
So when the tables got turned and all conquering squad emerged which was clad in yellow jersey but in fact were Men in Blue, it was scarcely believable. Of course we all lived through a joyful 2011 campaign but we did lose one match and just about managed to tie another one - the SF win was also not really a cakewalk. From there to seeing a team just about dismissing everyone else from presence, with every single person in the XI firing and firing well, it was just unreal. One can be excused for thinking or rather believing this is it - this one is a done deal. It was not just die hard fans, it was the whole chorus of pundits on the popular Pavilion show, writers on cricinfo, widen and most youtubers/podcasters. Memes were running riot on how its all inevitable and there was lot of scorn as well on how its all almost 'engineered' and the excess of it.
Then the final arrived at that stadium and pitch where things are always dicey. The challenger who were written off initially as a hastily put together team with minimal thought and who had horrendous campaign at the start and looked ripe for an upset was finally looking ready. They were looking happy to have somehow made it past so many fires and reaching the finals was almost a miracle. But as they say what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, so here they were. But we knew from so many past campaigns how this script was to play out, the plucky challenger will throw several punches try to put on their A game but somehow against the all mighty dominant team they will falter at some point. And then the script flipped, they all declared there was almost no weakness for Team India - except the 4 no:11s once you get past 6 batters - but no one really could so far so that was not an issue except when it happened in the finals. The challengers played a near flawless A game and kept India to a clearly under par score. Next when they had to bat, for a while it looked like things were happening as expected until it stopped and then one man stood up and played an innings for ages. Everything we or for that matter the fans of losing finalists of 99, 03, 07 expected actually ended up happening. The good challenger played at their best and then some individual brilliance of all time to top it off and the mighty dominant team got felled for once breaking the usual script and breaking lot of our hearts with it.
Such is life and sport but there is always hope and good times are just around the corner and we continue to hope for that one day again!
