India - Pak World Cup Matches : A Theatre for Hyper-Nationalism.
Congratulations team India for the spectacular win and maintaining the undefeated tag in the World Cup matches against Pak and stretching our drubbing of the Pakistanis to 7-0, going beyond the tennis scoreline. Cricket in India reflects or maintains a strong collective psychology of the people that gives rise to collective identities, which evidenced itself in multitude of Indian victory celebrations all across India and in England on Sunday.
If there is one match that stands out in any of the cricket World Cup matches it ought to be the India Pakistan match not necessarily because of the cricketing merit that it warrants, but because of the hyper nationalism that is evidenced on both sides of the border, by tens of millions of cricket fans who are glued on to their TV sets and also those few thousands who shell out huge amount of money and manage to make it to the ground for watching the match live. India versus Pakistan World Cup match is the biggest sporting rivalry in the world today. More than a billion people, watched the Old Trafford match live on television this Sunday. There are estimates that the organisers had received close to 700,000 requests for tickets for Sunday’s epic game. This shows the unending die hard fans hunger to see India and Pakistan play cricket in a World Cup match that is about politics, passion and national identity. There are reports that the tickets for this match were resold for an unprecedented £5,000 on resale sites. Such is the craving for watching the match live and being right there where it matters.
There was added hyper nationalism this year with media on both sides accentuating it particularly in the backdrop of the Pulwama attack. Pakistan did their bit by an ill timed commercial ridiculing Wg. Cdr. Abhinandan and fuelling fire to the already charged atmosphere in the background of the Pulwama attack. The Indian fans and media gave a befitting reply by conveying their ‘Abhinandan’ to the men in Blue for drubbing their arch rivals, Pakistan and taking revenge for the insult meted out to our hero Abhinandan. True to expectations from tens of millions of Indian fans from across the globe, India befittingly basked in sunshine at the Old Trafford outshining not just the Pakistanis but also the sun, which was trying to play hide and seek. Men in blue led by their run machine Virat Kohli, and the indomitable Rohit Sharma, proved they are far too superior to the Pakistanis, by winning almost a one sided match by an emphatic 89 runs. The organisers, too played their part by ensuring that the match is played on a Sunday, which guaranteed that many more eye balls, both on and off site.
Rohit Sharma was at his masterly best scoring a match winning 140 in just 113 balls, his second century in the current championship, which helped India post a daunting target for Pakistan to score 337 runs for the victory. Though there was a break of one hour when the skies opened up leaving one to wonder whether the Pakistani fans prayers for rain had come true, but then it was India’s and Rohit’s day, and the rain and sun gods too decided not to play spoil sport but to join those hundreds of millions of Indian fans to bask in the sunshine that the match facilitated for the Indian cricket fans.
Rohit Sharma has an extraordinary distinction of scoring three double centuries in the ODI, as against eight ever scored in the history of the men’s ODI cricket. Most interestingly the first ever double hundred to be scored in the ODI did not come from men, but from an outstanding women cricketeer, Belinda Clark. It was 16th December 1997, the same year when Saed Anwar of Pakistan had scored the highest ever ODI runs of 194 against India at the Chinnaswamy stadium in Chennai, when Belinda Clark broke into the 200 runs mark in a ODI going on to score 229 runs against the Netherlands. The first to enter the double hundred club in men’s cricket was the God of Cricket - Sachin Tendulkar who scored 200 against South Africa in 2010 at Gwalior. The other men to enter the 200 club include Rohit Sharma (3 times), Sachin Tendulkar, Virendra Sehwag, Martin Guptil, Chris Gayle and Fakhar Zaman.
While curating the Cricket exhibition India - England, one of the section in the exhibition was Hits and Misses, under which I had compared the hits of a highest score of 264 that Rohit Sharma had scored with the misses of Sunil Gavaskar‘ infamous innings, which I wish to narrate here to put the excellence of Rohit Sharma in context.
The inaugural Cricket World Cup, hosted in 1975 by England, witnessed an infamous Sunny innings. Sunil Gavaskar, the first man to reach 10,000 runs in Tests and the player who had carved out a special name for himself in his debut series against the mighty West Indies in 1971, played an innings which he insists he would like to obliterate from his records. England batsmen made merry and beat Indian bowlers to pulp to record the first 300-plus score (334/4) in an ODI. India made a disastrous debut in the inaugural ODI World Cup. Needing a massive 335 to win in the given 60 overs, India ended their innings disastrously, at a leisurely 132 for three after batting the full quota of 60 overs. The legendary opener, Sunil Gavaskar played one of the slowest ODI knocks, as he carried his bat through the innings to score a slothful 36 not out facing 174 balls scoring just one boundary.
This infamous innings of Gavaskar can best be seen when juxtaposed with the innings of his city player Rohit Sharma. Rohit scored a mammoth 264 against Sri Lanka at the Eden Garden - the highest ODI international score till date- facing 173 balls, one ball less than what Gavaskar had faced. Such is the power of the Rohit, which came to play yesterday against our arch rivals Pakistan. In the three matches that he has played in this World Cup he has already scored two hundreds and a half century. One billion plus Indians will be hoping and praying that he takes this form till the end of the season and help India win the World Cup for the third time.
Congratulations team India for the spectacular win and maintaining the undefeated tag in the World Cup matches against Pak and stretching our drubbing of the Pakistanis to 7-0, going beyond the tennis scoreline. Cricket in India reflects or maintains a strong collective psychology of the people that gives rise to collective identities, which evidenced itself in multitude of Indian victory celebrations all across India and in England on Sunday.
If there is one match that stands out in any of the cricket World Cup matches it ought to be the India Pakistan match not necessarily because of the cricketing merit that it warrants, but because of the hyper nationalism that is evidenced on both sides of the border, by tens of millions of cricket fans who are glued on to their TV sets and also those few thousands who shell out huge amount of money and manage to make it to the ground for watching the match live. India versus Pakistan World Cup match is the biggest sporting rivalry in the world today. More than a billion people, watched the Old Trafford match live on television this Sunday. There are estimates that the organisers had received close to 700,000 requests for tickets for Sunday’s epic game. This shows the unending die hard fans hunger to see India and Pakistan play cricket in a World Cup match that is about politics, passion and national identity. There are reports that the tickets for this match were resold for an unprecedented £5,000 on resale sites. Such is the craving for watching the match live and being right there where it matters.
There was added hyper nationalism this year with media on both sides accentuating it particularly in the backdrop of the Pulwama attack. Pakistan did their bit by an ill timed commercial ridiculing Wg. Cdr. Abhinandan and fuelling fire to the already charged atmosphere in the background of the Pulwama attack. The Indian fans and media gave a befitting reply by conveying their ‘Abhinandan’ to the men in Blue for drubbing their arch rivals, Pakistan and taking revenge for the insult meted out to our hero Abhinandan. True to expectations from tens of millions of Indian fans from across the globe, India befittingly basked in sunshine at the Old Trafford outshining not just the Pakistanis but also the sun, which was trying to play hide and seek. Men in blue led by their run machine Virat Kohli, and the indomitable Rohit Sharma, proved they are far too superior to the Pakistanis, by winning almost a one sided match by an emphatic 89 runs. The organisers, too played their part by ensuring that the match is played on a Sunday, which guaranteed that many more eye balls, both on and off site.
Rohit Sharma was at his masterly best scoring a match winning 140 in just 113 balls, his second century in the current championship, which helped India post a daunting target for Pakistan to score 337 runs for the victory. Though there was a break of one hour when the skies opened up leaving one to wonder whether the Pakistani fans prayers for rain had come true, but then it was India’s and Rohit’s day, and the rain and sun gods too decided not to play spoil sport but to join those hundreds of millions of Indian fans to bask in the sunshine that the match facilitated for the Indian cricket fans.
Rohit Sharma has an extraordinary distinction of scoring three double centuries in the ODI, as against eight ever scored in the history of the men’s ODI cricket. Most interestingly the first ever double hundred to be scored in the ODI did not come from men, but from an outstanding women cricketeer, Belinda Clark. It was 16th December 1997, the same year when Saed Anwar of Pakistan had scored the highest ever ODI runs of 194 against India at the Chinnaswamy stadium in Chennai, when Belinda Clark broke into the 200 runs mark in a ODI going on to score 229 runs against the Netherlands. The first to enter the double hundred club in men’s cricket was the God of Cricket - Sachin Tendulkar who scored 200 against South Africa in 2010 at Gwalior. The other men to enter the 200 club include Rohit Sharma (3 times), Sachin Tendulkar, Virendra Sehwag, Martin Guptil, Chris Gayle and Fakhar Zaman.
While curating the Cricket exhibition India - England, one of the section in the exhibition was Hits and Misses, under which I had compared the hits of a highest score of 264 that Rohit Sharma had scored with the misses of Sunil Gavaskar‘ infamous innings, which I wish to narrate here to put the excellence of Rohit Sharma in context.
The inaugural Cricket World Cup, hosted in 1975 by England, witnessed an infamous Sunny innings. Sunil Gavaskar, the first man to reach 10,000 runs in Tests and the player who had carved out a special name for himself in his debut series against the mighty West Indies in 1971, played an innings which he insists he would like to obliterate from his records. England batsmen made merry and beat Indian bowlers to pulp to record the first 300-plus score (334/4) in an ODI. India made a disastrous debut in the inaugural ODI World Cup. Needing a massive 335 to win in the given 60 overs, India ended their innings disastrously, at a leisurely 132 for three after batting the full quota of 60 overs. The legendary opener, Sunil Gavaskar played one of the slowest ODI knocks, as he carried his bat through the innings to score a slothful 36 not out facing 174 balls scoring just one boundary.
This infamous innings of Gavaskar can best be seen when juxtaposed with the innings of his city player Rohit Sharma. Rohit scored a mammoth 264 against Sri Lanka at the Eden Garden - the highest ODI international score till date- facing 173 balls, one ball less than what Gavaskar had faced. Such is the power of the Rohit, which came to play yesterday against our arch rivals Pakistan. In the three matches that he has played in this World Cup he has already scored two hundreds and a half century. One billion plus Indians will be hoping and praying that he takes this form till the end of the season and help India win the World Cup for the third time.
No comments:
Post a Comment