Usually my day starts with me walking just a few minutes after the sunrise to get 1.5 liters of milk for my family. I would have to go past a Corporation Play Ground to reach the Aavin booth. The play-ground inhabits a basket-ball court, a volley-ball court and a gym. Few North-Indians popularly known as Marwadis in Chennai would be playing volley-ball to reduce the sweet-paan-ghee induced cholesterol in their bodies. The gym would be seldom open but when opened, it would busy with young men sweating their butt off to put that extra muscle in their bodies. Older men would be running around the inside of the ground to reduce their pot bellies and some exercising on the jungle-gym found in the play-ground. Even though there is a basket-ball court, I have never seen anyone play basket-ball there. The court is only used for playing cricket and one can always find few youngsters hitting the ball. Off late, I even found a person training kids on karate. During school days, the ground will not be that crowded but weekends and school vacation always made the teens and the youngsters populate the playground even before the sunrise for playing cricket.
That's the usual scene that I had witnessed for the past eleven years. However, on the morning of April 3rd of 2011, I felt that cricket will not be played here anymore with the same passion it was played until today. No more tennis balls would be hit with the same aggression in that basket-ball court. No more Pepsi balls would be bowled with the same heart inside that ground. It would be bigger than ever one would have imagined. I felt that the kid who was facing the ball that morning would be recollecting how his heroes the previous night were inching towards victory with each ball being bowled in the final. I felt that every time a teenager hits the ball from that time would feel how Dhoni would have felt when he hit the winning knock and relishing that moment as if he was the one who hit that six. Every time an aspiring bowler bowled that morning would imagine himself as Zak bowling the maiden overs the previous night. The passion is ignited ever than before. It is all because India won the Cricket World Cup 2011 just few hours before the start of this day.
Usually the losing team would have the woulds and coulds and the ifs and the buts. "We (losing team) could have scored some 20 more runs but....."."If we would have played with that player, we would have not lost but...."."If he had taken that catch, it would have been the turning point of the match, but...." But I felt now that the winning team would also have the woulds but in the opposite way. Now politicians would say India won because their party was in reign, ruling the country. Selectors would say India won because we selected the right players. Sponsors would say India won because our brand names were on their jerseys. Astrologists and Numerologists would now claim that they had predicted India will win. It is rightly said that Success has many fathers while failure is an orphan. Let whoever claim whatever they said it would happen. History was re-written last night and more than claiming, cricketing fans in India would want to relish this moment for their entire lives.
I was always skeptical about the performance of the Indian team in any tournament but that night this event has made my mouth shut and many others like me and with a remorse for such an attitude, I felt proud for being an Indian that night. India first sent Australia to their homes, second Pakistan to their homes and finally Sri Lanka to their homes. And what did India bring to our homes? The Cricket World Cup 2011.
