The jinx is broken!

Thanks to a too-caught-up-in-work-to-go friend of mine I was fortunate to get my hands on the tickets for the final one dayer between India and Australia. Thanks Nrupal.

My friends and colleagues were not too happy about it. Well, they had their reasons for it. The reason being my honest admission that up until then I had never witnessed a match which was won by the team I supported. Be it the Ranji Trophy match between Haryana and Karnataka ( I was supporting Haryana; reason: Jadeja) or the ICC championship final between Australia and New Zealand ( No prizes for guessing which team I supported) or the test match between India and England ( India lost in three days. I went on day 3). The official conclusion: I am jinxed.

Well, I am a little superstitious when it comes to cricket. But, jinxed? I certainly was not. For two days prior to the match this became the lunch-time hot topic: colleagues threatening me with dire consequences if I were to go and direr if India was to lose. And I took up the challenge. “The jinx shall be broken” became my slogan. I don’t remember the number of times I had to use it. I was just short of printing it on my shirt….or forehead.

D-day.

I was trying to come up with excuses to leave early from work. But I couldn’t do better than a headache and a stomachache. These would never have worked. My excitement was far too obvious to hide behind such outdated excuses. But there was god news in store. My boss had a client-side meeting in the afternoon. Small mercies!! All I had to do was inform his secretary that I was leaving.

There were many tiny little incidents before, during and after the match that deserve a mention. I will save them for a later post. I will concentrate on the match now.

Australia won the toss and decided to bat first. Thanks to our late-bloomer Murali Karthik (he took 6), Australia was restricted to a not-so-challenging score of 193. Just when I thought we were having a good start Sachin got out. I will not dwell on it. You know the feeling (At least, he treated me with a Straight Drive before leaving). Roughly 5% of the crowd left. We started loosing wickets at regular intervals. After every wicket a portion of the crowd left. I have never understood how one can do that. I and a friend, who joined me for the second innings, simply sat there and numbly stared down the pitch. Leaving was not even an option. We are too romanticized with cricket to leave, to lose faith. But, the inevitable was staring right at our face. We wanted to enjoy it as long as it lasted. For almost half an hour we went through motions: clapping for singles and screaming till our throats ached for those rare boundaries.

The required runs kept decreasing from 80 to 70 to 60. Once it crossed 50 we started hoping again. I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea, to hope. I was getting comfortable in the no-pressure expectation of a loss, and suddenly these two guys in blue (Zaheer and Karthik) were teasing me with an agonizing ray of hope. Lord! I can’t go through this again! Well, I did hold on to that ray of hope and started my silent mantra which goes something like “comm’on, comm’on,……”. It’s amazing how lonely one can feel looking down at that pitch, praying for an Indian win, even though the twenty thousand people around you are cheering for exactly the same thing. It comes down to you and the guys on the field…..and of course, the scoreboard.

50…40….30….20…10….1…..We Won!!!! Clap! Clap!...Sweaty hand clapping. The jinx is broken……

And for those who left mid-way: Faith, my friends, Faith.

When is the next match in Bombay? ;)

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