In a sporting contest that you have some emotional investment in – that is, you are rooting for one of the parties, or at the very least rooting against one of the parties – there always arrives a moment when the realisation that your preferred result is not happening sets in, often manifesting itself in the form of a sigh. In the World Cup final last night, that moment came for me when Travis Head smacked a six off Kuldeep Yadav. It was an ugly slog sweep in the 16th over, and Australia still needed 160 odd runs to win, but the sigh, like an involuntary sneeze, overrode all systems, and arrived with the inevitability of Australia winning cricket world cups – in all formats, across genders.
This sigh is sometimes collective, especially if there are big moments, like Head snaring a terrific catch to dismiss Rohit Sharma who looked like he knew a secret game control or two the way he set off in arguably the biggest game he has ever played. Sigh! He had been dismissed in the 40s. Again. But as the game wore on, the sighs take a trajectory of their own. Maybe many sighed again when Kohli chopped a delivery on to his stumps, having just reached his fifty, and looking like settling in on a difficult pitch. That India hit practically no boundaries in the second powerplay was not as evident, but sigh, the scorecard at the end did show that something was off. Sigh, Shami with a horrendous shot when there are overs still to play, but what is he supposed to do? He is playing primarily as a bowler here. 240 all out in 50 overs. Sigh, if only we could scramble 30 odd more. Sigh, Bumrah giving us flashbacks of Zaheer Khan’s disastrously expensive over in 2003. Sigh, we have an early wicket, but that fellow who annoyed us to bits in London earlier this year in a tournament final after the bowlers had gotten early wickets is still there.
Maybe by now, depending on what sort of fan you are, both the frequency and the amplitude of the sighs were increasing. Sighs are the SI unit of heartbreak. In a close game, the adrenaline and the buzz drown it out, and it’s the end result that brings the heartbreak on suddenly; it’s difficult to sigh when you are nervous beyond words. But in these kind of drip drip death by a thousand (off) cuts kind of losses, where the gloom of defeat gathers ever darker like a storm cloud before bursting, they build and build, aging you by the minute, with every new bowling change that did not work, with every raised brow in disbelief as even Bumrah the magician seems out of tricks on the biggest stage. What began as collective sighs that you could feel and take comfort from at the beginning, when they were still laced with hope, are now just lonely personal pathways to the centre of your heart nursing broken hopes and shattered dreams.
To borrow a turn of phrase from Jurgen Klopp, this most important of the least important things that is sport is all about holding on to hope, kindling it and rekindling it, despite every wayward gust threatening to blow the flame away. In fact this Indian team played so well, so poetically almost, that the expectation of a fairy tale ending appeared neither greedy nor far fetched. Death by a thousand hopes lit – surely a team that practically put in a flawless show for ten games is a lock for the title – and then cruelly extinguished is what’s hurting you the most right now if you are a team India fan.
You finally force yourself to get up, because your friends are telling you let’s go for a walk to clear the head, and maybe have a sad cup of chai. You place your hands on your knees and get up. For now, you let the hurt be, washing over you and look to tomorrow. Not because a new sunrise will magically wipe the misery clean, but because it will allow us to begin again. Some of the players who featured in that final will not have that opportunity at a World Cup again, but this is an infinitely lucky privilege that you as a sports fan have. The privilege of ‘next time’.
Sigh. There is always next time.
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