Thankfully I am writing this after a few days India became the Twenty20 Champions, for it will put my views in perspective. I like any other cricket enthusiast was/is over the moon after India's success at the cricket's world stage. But seeing the associated vain display put on after that, my euphoria is withering, and thakfully for good measure. It gives me time to reflect on the right side of it, before the opinion is actually forced on me after the subsequent bad results, God forbid, if any.
India won the world championship, because there was a purpose in their quest, with the related attibutes of fearlessness and athlecitism adding strength to it. They played in a zone where the prospect of gain was more than the fear of loss. Hindsight is always good to have to lavish praise, but the result was destined for success, the moment they took the field in this fashion. That's why it gets more surprising for me, that we haven't shown a similar approach in our celebrations in the aftermath.
Celebration is a must after any achievement, but we do it to make or rather say, refresh our ideas for future. We just don't do it to savour the past; it is also about dreaming of the future. Did we achieve this with our pompous felicitation of the victory? Not in any way. We never put this in context and so, never deemed it right to attach proportion to it. I am not against giving monetary incentives to the winners, but by giving this ludicrous about of money, you are saying as if they hadn't gone for winning anyway. Whether this will effect on the players a boost or an anesthetic, only time will tell. Time in the past has told though that more often than not, mediocrity has followed excellence for the very loss of this direction.
Apropos the media interaction, nobody in the press conference asked the media to refrain from adding adjectives to the team's performance, but it will come back to haunt them when they will lose. Sreesanth was incessant with his reactions on the last catch and his bowling in the semi-final. But what answers he will have when he drops a sitter in another final or Matt Hayden takes him apart in the coming one-dayers? Also nobody talked about the things learnt and what positive steps he is going to take to repeat the success. Worse was the behaviour of BCCI and the politicians ever ready to garner the attention, when they thronged the first rows without ever giving their insight/action into the future.
I do give an impression of a cynic here, but I am trying to learn from the past. I have suffered from this false sense of achievement with cricket enough that I dread of bordering on the excitement. It will help the players and the officials also if they remember, amidst all this frippery, that it is the purpose only which carried them here and it will hold true in future also.
