The day, two countries stood still

30th March 2011, the day will go down in the history books as the day when two countries were brought to a grinding halt by  the game of cricket.

Given the fact that all the omens and past records were pointing to a favorable result, the coward fan in me kept denying all the positivity in the air. Someone tried to convince me that we share a 4-0 record against them, I replied him saying that the law of averages will definitely make us lose today. Some one said Sachin will definitely win this one for us. I almost shouted back at him saying; please keep Sachin out of this. There is nothing left there for him to give it to us. He has virtually given everything to us. I don’t care if we lose today but please keep my GOD out of it. In the heart of the hearts, I too wanted the cup for Sachin but I didn’t want to be drowned in the ocean of despair in case our team bows out and Sachin once again goes empty handed.

It was my way of building a defense mechanism against the possible situation of India bowing out of this semi-final and people starts blaming Sachin and I am sure I was not alone out there. Many of the avid readers of the game were doing something similar. Somewhere in their heart, they wanted to stand on their roof tops and scream at the alto of their voice that this world cup is ours, this world cup belongs to Sachin. Give it to us so that we may live the rest of our lives in peace or for that matter of fact, die in peace as there will no grudge left.

We have been there before, we have shouted for our team, our Sachin in the past. However, every time, some one would play a spoil sport and the nation of a billion people would be left with dashed hopes and bruised egos. Some time it would either the ruthless hitting of Jaisurya and Kalu or the daftness of Arvind De Silva. At others, it would be Punter’s audacity and the fire power of Pigeon. Just when the things would start to look rosy, Mr nobody from nowhere would come and take the game away from us. Hence, this time around, even the Midas touch of MSD was not soothing the ever-rising pulse rate of the Indian fans.

One may find it ridiculous but the fan in me started to curse economist turned puppet Mr Manmohan Singh for turning this game into a high voltage drama. What if Afridi goes boom boom either with the bat or the ball? The chances of him being the thorn in the flesh of the GOD are very high.

Being a Wednesday and an official working day were not helping the cause either. Though, there was nothing I could have done being in the office, I decided to watch the game in the company of my friends. I reached the decided venue (my friend’s place) just in time for the first delivery to be bowled. Sehwag set the tempo by hitting five 4s in Gul’s over. The Najafgarh Nawab once again showed, why he is one of the most feared batsman in today’s era. He has that power of taking the game away in 10 overs. Today, he just needed one. After that Pakistanis kept coming at the Indians but the initial flurry of 4s was too much to erase so quickly from their memories. It also gave an ample amount of time to India to build the innings. The word that could describe India’s performance aptly is Clinical, there were flashes of brilliance every now and then but they were thoroughly professional in their approach and avoided doing the things that gives the slightest of the chance to their brothers from the other side of the fence. Dropped Catches while Sachin was batting was truly a divine intervention and the men, who were bleeding green, could do nothing about it.

I would like to share two instances that describe the intensity with which this game was followed by the viewers. I had to move away from the TV set for a brief period of 20 minutes. I had to collect some stuff from a near by place. I unwillingly started my bike and I zipped of at a high speed.

Just when I was passing through the near by dominoes pizza, I saw Yuvi taking a wicket, I turned the ignition off and raised my arms. This impromptu act was done in the mid of the road and my dearest of all, Sapna joined me in my jig. A few passers by smiled and then they too started yelling Sachin Sachin. Though, Sachin had played no part in taking that wicket, they remained happily oblivious to this fact. Another instance was when I reached back at our joint; I had to wait for the lift for 5 minutes. These 5 minutes were the most restless 5 minutes of my life. In the end, I ended up doing countless huddles with best buddies and we were jumping up and down like teens. In that sense were teens only, which were deprived by such joy in their early age.  This game gave us good omens that we are peaking at the right time but as I said earlier, we had to be cautious of end moment spoilers and we share a pretty nasty history with the Lankans.