electric !

 

THAT was one of the most electric moments of Indian sports ever -- Indian women winning the ODI World Cup in the most authentic -- even sublime -- manner. There were prayers all over before the match -- for success in the final encounter. Yet, internally, every Indian somehow felt almost sure that the girls would bring that great glory home. Twice in the past, that glory had eluded them, all right. But this time, everybody felt almost sure that the fruition of the national dream was just around the corner. Those prayers, that silent confidence, that esoteric promise -- all came true at that electric moment. The girls -- and the nation -- deserved that glory. True, there were some anxious moments in the match. But minus those, cricket would not be cricket, if one may say so.

 

Its glorious uncertainty, its scary unpredictability, its silent sense of nagging unease in the mind -- without all those, cricket would not be cricket. In this Women’s ODI World Cup tournament, India’s cup was full of those moments. Every match brought hope and despair and question-marks and promises all put together. And each time, India’s girls led by the indomitable Harmanpreet Kaur and powered by Smriti Mandhana and pushed by Jemimah Rodrigues and nudged by Shefali Verma and Deepti Sharma and every other girl in Blue out there in the middle turned the tables in their favour. Possibly, somebody in some rival camp might have thought that some ‘magic’ was being put to use in India’s favour. All was so magical, so fabulous. Where is the need to talk of details of who made how many runs and took how many wickets ? What needs to be talked about is the manner and method of the Indian eves before, during and after the matches. They were statuettes of grace, grandeur and greatness -- each one of them.

 

here, in their national Blues, they stood together, thought together, played together -- and made a mess of the rival plans so systematically, so clinically (and almost so mercilessly) ! Indian eves were always a good team. They had shown how good they were twice earlier when they reached the finals. But that they were good was not good enough. The nation craved for the Cup -- of glory and greatness. And this time, the Harmanpreet girls gave that to India. Women’s cricket has a long vintage in India. We have had some iconic players, too, whose records women from other country-teams dream of breaking. Despite that, women’s cricket in the country was yet to achieve that solidity that men’s version has. In the past few years, the upward push of women’s cricket in terms of excellence was becoming more and more obvious. But there still were many questions to answer.

 

Harmanpreet Kaur’s team, however, found answers to all those troubling issues. They played a game whose quality would be the envy of even men’s teams. What was most important as a virtue of the Indian eves’ team was its flexibility -- so much so that we even felt that the girls had gone through a special training programme to scrape off all their rigidity. They -- as individual players and as team -- were very open, very experimental, yet so sure-footed. They tried different modes and methods out in the middle -- as if they had long pondered over those -- and gave effect to their creative ideas. Individual players mattered -- and did not matter. What mattered was the game-plan as per which every move was carried out in clock-like precision. There were failures, as well, but those were taken in the stride. And even the winners -- shots and wickets -- also came in cricket’s legendary stride. Special -- but clinical, clean. With warm emotion, all right, but also in a cold-blooded manner. May women’s cricket in India continue to rise on this upward trajectory all the time. In such a culture, winning or losing are only the milestones.