There was nothing wrong with the India team that played the finals. They played well. They lost because one team had to lose. There indeed is something wrong but not with the team or the players but with the hype created around the team since the World Cup began. The BCCI ably assisted by the parivar raised public expectations to a level difficult to attain. The stadium was full with people not particularly enthusiastic for cricket, but had come to celebrate the anticipated victory. As the portents turned ominous the crowd melted away with barely anyone waiting to hear the usually voluble Prime Minister, who too looked pretty uncomfortable, as he quickly walked off the podium. Perhaps the Wankede Stadium or the Eden Gardens spectators would be a different class.
It was a defeat, a discerning observer could see coming, though not articulated because we are living in times, when the patriotism of any person making a dispassionate scrutiny is immediately under challenge. We have historically believed that we are the crown of creation; carried away by this belief we underrated the Aussies, despite them being the reigning T-20 and Test champions.
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The problem is ancient; it was perfectly summed up by Swami Vivekananda in the nineteenth century:
To my mind, the one great cause of the downfall and degeneration of India was the building of a wall of custom – whose foundation was hatred of others – round the nation.
I am thoroughly convinced that no individual or nation can live by holding itself apart from the community of others, and whenever such an attempt has been made under false ideas of greatness, policy, or holiness – the result has always been disastrous to the secluding one.
Give and take is the law, and if India wants to raise herself once more, it is absolutely necessary that she brings out her treasures and throws them broadcast among the nations of the earth, and in return be ready to receive what others have to give her. Expansion is life, contraction is death. Love is life and hatred is death. We commenced to die the day we began to hate other races, and nothing can prevent our death unless we come back to expansion, which is life.
“The chief cause of India’s ruin has been the monopolising of the whole education and intelligence of the land, by dint of pride and royal authority, among a handful of men. (As quoted by Chaturvedi Badrinath in Dharma: Hinduism and Religions in India)
Interestingly Swami Vivekananda echoes what Al Biruni the Persian traveller had observed some eight centuries earlier;“The Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no kings like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs. They are haughty, foolishly vain, self-conceited, and stolid. They are by nature niggardly in communicating that which they know, and they take the greatest possible care to withhold it from men of another caste among their own people, still much more, of course, from any foreigner. According to their belief, there is no other country on earth but theirs, no other race of man but theirs, and no created beings besides them have any knowledge or science whatsoever…
…..all their fanaticism is directed against those who do not belong to them – against all foreigners. They call them mlechha, ie impure, and forbid any connection with them, be it by intermarriage or any other kind of relationship, or by sitting, eating, and drinking with them, because thereby, they think, they would be polluted.
…….. “If they travelled and mixed with other nations, they would soon change their mind, for their ancestors were not as narrow-minded as the present generation is.”(Tarikh-ul-Hind)
The false idea of greatness as so aptly identified by Swami Vivekananda is what led us to our doom. Thus, while we gloated in our assumed greatness, the Aussies quietly did their homework and beat us fair and square, on our home ground. The Aussies clearly understood and exploited the conditions, better. Their decision to opt to bowl on winning the toss appeared inexplicable, but their performance explains the rationale behind it. After early hiccups, it was an easy canter for them.
Our acclaimed batsmen flattered to deceive at the most critical moment. Our bowling was ineffective. The ten successive victories had lulled us into a false sense of invincibility. All those ten victories mean so little at the crunch. The kangaroo waiting for such an opportunity has tamed the tiger, in its own den!
Our media has in recent years lost the ability to critically analyse the teams and players; instead Indian players are hyped up. The readers lap it up. So when defeat comes, it becomes difficult to digest. Of course, eventually, character prevails over charade.
Jay Shah so visibly appears to be out of place, for such an exalted post as Secretary of the powerful BCCI. Possibly he had never seen a cricket match, before he was foisted into the post. The suave and sophisticated Anthony Stanislaus De Melo (with roots in Saligao, Goa) the founder and long serving Secretary and later President of BCCI in its formative years, may be turning in his grave at York Cemetery in New Delhi, seeing the shenanigans of his distant successor.
The matches were scheduled as per astrological advice. The pitch was meticulously prepared under Vaastu principles. But nothing helped. Science won over superstition. In the end it is the Aussies who sipped wine while we were left to whine!
(Radharao F Gracias is a senior Trial Court Advocate and a former Independent MLA)
