As the ball soared up in the air, punched off the usually brutal blade of Rahul Dravid's bat, a million hearts held still. Five seconds of an endless wait to see what none of us wanted to see-the ball landing right in the hands of Muralitharan, who danced ecstatically even as a million hearts cried. The verdict was virtually out-India's out of the World Cup. For a country that has made cricket its religion, it was a tough reality to reconcile with. And the repercussions are very obvious.
Within minutes of India's ignominious defeat, in fact even before that, the media had begun splashing muck on the names of our cricketing heroes, blog posts had begun surfacing imploring all Indians to boycott the products endorsed by Team India, and what have you. Like any other Indian cricket buff, I too, was disappointed by the dismal performance. But as an afterthought, we might want to ask ourselves what authority we, the public, really are to hurl expletives on these players, who are just another eleven humans like us. In fact, if today we accuse them of taking their stardom for granted and of approaching the game too callously, we also have a role to play here. We are the ones who take them to a pedestal with a small spark of brilliance they show in the initial phase of their career, and we also are the ones who raze them to the ground so ruthlessly when they fall below expectations. A couple of blitzkreig knocks by a newcomer called MS Dhoni make us compare him to a cricketing God called Sachin Tendulkar. Can we, then, blame him if he starts focusing more on flaunting his locks and campaigning for hair gels rather than concentrating on his game?
It's worthwhile to understand that at the end of the day, it is but a game, and someone has got to be on the receiving side. Give them a life, they are no sinners. Stop baying for their blood. And yes, they do need to mend their ways. But they are veterans, and mature enough to understand on their own that if they do not, they are doomed, because for them, cricket is their primary mode of earning their bread. The secondary sources in the form of brand endorsements are anyway going to run dry for them because no advertiser is now going to sign up any of these players until they can show their worth again. So we need not bother to boycott the products. I, for one, am not willing to give up my Adidas sneakers just because someone is not scoring runs, for no fault of mine.
The best way to bring these players down to reality would probably be to ignore them. Waiting for them with handfuls of stones at the airport will only reiterate their belief that we still worship them and expect them to do better in the future.