Blame It On the Men in Blue

I slept at 4 yesterday. That's 4 AM in the morning. No it wasn't because I had an off day at job the next day. Neither had it anything to do with me being in pursuit of some inconceivable idea on my dear lappy nor had it anything to do with me watching one of those flicks where you can't go to bed until the climax has been revealed. It had to do with something that I love a lot. Not only me, my brother, my roomies, most of my friends and in fact the whole of my country swear by their devotion to it. Its something that flows in the blood of almost all my countrymen ( I don't know about the women but they too are addicted to this). This virus that has plagued me and me comrades is a simple yet time stretching game of CRICKET (pronounced kri-ket).

Its said that whenever a child is born in the country he either learns how to wield the willow or how to hurl the round projectile (Read: BALL) in meandering paths even before learning how to carry his weight on his legs. Cricket is not just a game or a pastime out here but more of a religion and the players no less than the residing deities. Having yielded matchwinners for decades and been crowned world champions once, there is no denying that this craze is rooted on valid judgement and not mere hype. But there is always a thin line between adoration and worship. When you adore someone, you consider him human and fallible and his failures appear as mere stepping stones towards success. But when you worship someone, he becomes comparable to GOD and is certainly infallible. He can never lose and certainly never err. His mistakes, however feeble they may be, dethrone him not only from the Godly status he commands but also the human position he would have otherwise occupied. They now become sinners who should be driven away from the comforts of the middle earth into the fiery oblivions of the underworld. Every individual in my country considers him to be a better player/captain/coach/selector then the actual people who are entrusted with the job. One defeat and the whole country rises in a unison to criticise the eleven and find flaws in all aspects be it batting, bowling, fielding, toss, pitch, weather, team selection and other such blah blahs. With the very next victory, the country roars behind them and hails these fallen heroes as "Dharti Ke Laal" and the media as well as marketing brands pitch behind those whom they had shunned yesterday. Crushed between all these turmoil are the poor cricketers who now are confused as to what they are doing currently and what they are expected to do. Add to this, they have to endorse brands, make public appearances to glorify themselves, get into scandals so that people don't forget them and make as much money on the way. The only thing they forget about is that they have a role to play and a game to immortalise which they are only reminded of during those talked about defeats.

Yesterday we lost again. But this defeat meant that I had no more reason to watch the remaining one month of world cup which had just started a couple of weeks back. We were subdued by two nations belonging to the sub-continent whose combined size, population, GDP, cricketing history gets dwarfed in front of ours. Yet we lost. We had more superstars, more statistical advantage, more odds in our favour, yet we lost. Yesterday was probably the last time I saw my idol (see I told you we idolise our cricketers :) ) playing in a world cup. I have turned dumb ears towards all the ongoing disaster analysis programmes because these have been included only to channelise the TRPs that have been hit by this failure. I needed to do something about this. So I decided to do something. I started blamestorming. From now on anything bad that happens in my life will be blamed on the defeat of my cricket team. So I slept late. Blame it on the men in blue. I woke up late and disgruntled. Blame it on the men in blue. I missed my breakfast. Blame it on the men in blue. My brother woke up with a slight fever. Blame it on the men in blue. My lappy was crawling the web while what it normally does is jogging. Blame it on the men in blue. I didn't like the lunch I had. Blame it on the men in blue. I couldn't watch the TV because it had all the rubbish things going on. Blame it on the men in blue. I just remembered that I had bunked a bit of my office work the previous week. Blame it on the men in blue. And as I am about to finish this piece of worthless script, I am thinking as to why I wasted my time writing about this? Blame it on the men in blue. As an upcoming actor exclaims in a recent to-be-released flick " Woh Kehte hain naa, Jo hota hai Achchey ke liye hota hai" (meaning: Whatever happens, does for a good reason), I say " Galat Kehte hain" (meaning: Wrong). In the meantime, lets keep blaming everything on the men in blue.

P.S.: This post was actually written on the 24th of March, day after India lost to Sri Lanka and hence were ousted from the cricket world cup '07. The post gets its name from the 1984 romantic comedy Blame it On Rio starring Michael Caine and Demi Moore.