Memories, Memes, Musings and Memoirs (On what the T20 World Cup 2024 meant, and what it will continue to mean)

They say, you cannot script fairy-tales without introducing demons. Poetic endings are impossible without a phase where rhythm is found lacking. Climaxes need prior anti-climaxes to ensure that happy endings are earned and not just bestowed.

Sports is cruel, because it has the ability of igniting recurring hope. And hope is something which can polarise the state of being. It can often convert bouts of laughter into wry smiles. It can both enable and restrict positive imagination.

The unary outcome of sports leaves no room for multi-valued assessment of defeats. Statistics overpower sentiments, because the podium does not recognise how intensely the defeated wanted to be the victor.

The 2024 T20 World Cup win is like a bandage which just not conceals the wounds, but has curative properties to heal them from within. The victory feels like a weary desert traveller seeing an oasis, mentally considering it to be a mirage, and ending up finding that it exists in actuality. It is like a dreary yet a determined student working tirelessly to clear an elusive final exam, to find that the marksheet finally has the words "Cleared with distinction". It is like finding the love of your life waiting for you on the wedding altar, after a tumultuous heart-wrenching romantic chronicle.

The context arc couldn't have been more articulative. A legendary player turned coach, who in his playing days could never lay hands on the prized silverware. A man-next-door captain, with child-like innocence and heroic intent. An indefatigable champion, the master of run chase, with a trophy cabinet defined more by empty spaces than insertions. A celebrated all-rounder, coming from the annals of darkness and soul-crushing hatred. A demi-God masquerading as a leader of the pace bowling attack.

The Indian team's mega-tournament legacy was punctuated with the consistency of their inconsistency in the must-win matches. The "30 minutes of bad cricket" which costed tournaments and championships. The surrender of momentum. The trade-off of assertion with caution. The overwhelming, and sadly, over powering pressure. Analysis paralysis. Unsettled combinations and unsettling dynamics. The missing big day composure.

And yet, in a fitting manner, it took one leap for India to get over the finish line. History was erased, and created, all at the same time.

One additional reason why the victory feels hyper-personal, is due to the amplification effects of social media. No match experience is complete unless memes are traded, reels are assimilated and feeds are scrolled through. The information and reaction influx is vastly penetrative, overwhelmingly vast and frighteningly real-time. Athletes have no hiding space. It takes only a few moments for an activity to be analysed bare-bones at a mass scale.

Yet, for whatever it is worth, it makes the fan experience very engagement-heavy. Fan involvement (and sometimes interference) assumes epic proportions. The constant imagery of knock-out defeats almost traumatised an entire generation in India. It induced gloom, despair and even pessimism. We forgot what it meant to win a multi-nation tournament. Victories were lived only through nostalgia.

Khada hoon aaj bhi wahin, lagi teri hi aas hai,

Kaisi hai yeh bebasi, yeh kaisi dil ki pyaas hai.

This World Cup victory, however, applies more than a veneer to this tarred virtual imagery. This triumph provides both happiness and relief, which are more often than not, mutually exclusive feelings in the world of sports. This, I believe, is the summary of what this conquest means.

Tutaa yeh dil toh kyaa hua, abhi baaki hai dhadkane dhadkane,

Baaki hai hum me dum, har kasam ko phirse dohrao.

Hai sadaa har dil ki, har sadaa ko milke dohrao.

In the Bradman Oration of 2011, Rahul Dravid had mentioned - "After India won the World Cup this year, our players were not congratulated as much as they were thanked by people they ran into". I often wonder and think about the depth of this statement. There is no bigger platform than cricket in India as far as extension of one's supposed representation is concerned. The everyman on India's street thinks that this victory is not restricted to the eleven individuals who donned the blues against South Africa. This victory is also his, both privately and publicly. There is a collective social ownership of India lifting the cup. This sporting romanticism is a feeling to behold and treasure.

When the books of Indian cricket get written and re-written, this chapter will be laced with episodes of resilience, belief and assertion.

This was the midnight which took away the sporting nightmares of Indians and replaced them with sublime day-dreams.

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