5 things Indian fans need to realise during World Cups

It’s okay not to keep calm during the ICC World Cup. It’s okay to be obsessed about cricket so much so that you end up shadowing in bed. It’s also okay to call off your meeting or the doctor’s appointment when India is ripping apart South Africa’s lower order. Of course, your wife’s scheduled delivery appears too trivial in front of this pool match whose significance transcends mere sporting boundaries and basks in statistical splendor, but not before striking a few patriotic chords.World Cups are a tough time. The useless matches are never that useless, and this somehow, balances the secretly-acknowledged fact that the apparently important ones are seldom so. Yet an Indian viewer is pledge-bound to demonstrate his undying love for the game by watching ’em all.However, one must understand a few solemn things that the ideal society detests. Be it slipping back to the 90s and reminiscing on Azharuddin or constructing uncomfortable Misbah jokes nonchalantly on social media (Indians were never popular for their humor) – there are ways they need to quit being irritating.

#1 Blacklisting the team right after a defeat is not cool

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World Cup matches are like JEE exams. You get years to prepare yourself and ultimately, it comes down to just one day. It does not take Kolmogorov to calculate the odds of that being a bad day at office. Mistakes are only human, committing them under pressure being more so. The logic that goes behind the kid-who-could-not-crack-IIT not being slaughtered by his parents applies equally to the team that happened to screw up on their big day not deserving a furious mob waiting at the airport.

Having pioneered the art of hypocrisy for ages, Indians are accustomed to switching tables at astonishing frequencies. Consider the not-so-curious case of Shikhar Dhawan for instance. The Test series leading up to the World Cup has been harrowing for him much less performance-wise than TRP-wise. He’d have been Trott-zoned by the public opinion on him doing the rounds had he not been an Indian.

He knew he would take off and a single half-century would turn the tables on his public relations. And so it happened once the World Cup began. One month – that’s what it has taken to metamorphose from ‘worst gully cricketer ever’ to ‘best opener in the world currently’. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Indian media for you – one of the few endangered species that believe that a separate #WeWontGiveItBack advertisement for every match maintains the winning streak.