Dil, cricket, etc.

To begin with, we Indians are way too emotional. Okay, now that I have got you all riled up and ready to bash the Indianness out of me, let’s check out some facts about the catastrophe (not) that was the World T20 finals. Yuvraj Singh had a stinker, and India lost to Sri Lanka. Big deal? We should rather be happy to have played a part in such a glorious moment in Sri Lankan history. Right from Hanuman ji thumping Ravan, we have always been getting better of them, except that time in 1996 when Clive Lloyd hastily gave away the match at Calcutta before Vinod Kambli could rise up to the challenge.

Kambli, swiping away his tears, provoking his inner angry young man – yes – the same man who would later on perform tantalizing dance numbers in a movie cosmically named Annarth, was trying to conjure up a comeback. The Calcutta crowd, though, having lost their hopes, wasn’t too convinced and decided to bring up a premature end by forcing the match referee into action. It was a really sad day, and I felt cheated. In fact, sometimes (when I have nothing better to do) I still think about it and regard it as an Indian version of Montreal Screw Job.

Sri Lanka with the T20 championship, finally.

And you would agree when I say this, Sri Lanka vs. India has been played out so many times in recent history that we hardly see them as competition. We know them inside out. For god’s sake, some of us even know their national anthem and its exact timings, and it’s like our second national anthem, if that sort of a thing is allowed anywhere. India vs. Sri Lanka is no more a game, it’s more like one of those India Blue vs. India Reds Challenger Trophy games. We know we will win anyhow.

To be honest, this time things turned out rather astonishingly tough for us, and surely we were pretty much up against it when we scored a paltry score, courtesy some not so great batting by Yuvraj. I agree that his innings was one of the flop shows of the match, and I also know that he was into this phase of resurgence and battling his own personal demons and looking to revive his career. What I really don’t understand, though, is the degree of double standards that we as supporters/ fans/ fanatics and Keedas (knowing my platform) have for the team and individuals.

Yuvraj Singh

Most of us are still confused about what to make of the finals; should we be pro Yuvi or against him? We like this have our cake and eat it too sort of scenario: where we want to pinpoint and harangue the player who was at the centre of it all when we went down on the mat, yet we are still touchy and emotional to not berate him for he was this great player in the past and how he has single-handedly won us so many tournaments.

Had it been any other player, he would have been ridiculed without any qualms, with trollers having a field day. The kind of derision that Ishant Sharma, Ravinder Jadeja, etc., have been subject to is in no way rationally or emotionally better than the one Yuvraj is being a target of. And before people ask me to shut up for I have not gone through what Yuvraj has gone through and stop passing snap judgments on an issue that is way different than others, I would like to ask a couple of questions: Have any of us gone through even an iota of what all those other players have gone through before passing them through the dustbin, or have we ever dared to think about how hard a journey has it been not only for Yuvraj but for other players, as well.

Players who could have done with this sort of support – Ishant Sharma and Ravindra Jadeja

The worst part of it all is the kind of stands we take regardless of the player in question. We embark on such issues socially, spreading guns as well as the roses in equal measure which ultimately helps snowball the issue. I have seen barrage of montages with Yuvraj as focus and cliched inspirational quotes accompanying them; I have also seen an equal amount of abuse filled posts, tweets and messages circulated within few hours of the finals. This kind of portrays that we are not really sure of what we want to propagate. Are we assuaging the fallen hero’s pain, or are we starting a rant machine to beleaguer the culprit? We are pretty much sitting there and letting our angst, frustrations and hopes do the talking. The actions of social world all but manifests themselves in real life in form of nonsensical acts like pelting the said player’s home.

The thing I was bewildered by this time around was that in our hope to be an armchair critic, we propagate this uneven playing field to criticize players. Why are we sentimentally driven regarding all issues – illness, performances and the stature of the player? Why are there classifications of different scenarios? Can’t we rather just be controlled in the praise and wrath we spew for the players, keep our head above it all and let time heal things rather than stones and abuses do the talking?