Small Towns, Brave Hearts

A successful team like Australia cannot understand the celebration in India after Twenty20 World Cup victory. It is less populated and more used to victories and trophies. Cricket, hockey, rugby, golf, swimming and athletics have given them many champions. On the other hand the lone silvers and bronzes that we have won in recent past make the title of World Champions all the more precious. In achieving it the brave hearts from the small and dusty towns have made immense contribution; and, this is in tune with the changing face of India where it is merging with the Bharat. 

The celebration indulged in by India after its stunning victory over its arch rival Pakistan in the inaugural Twenty20 World Cup has truly been excessive and probably immodest in the opinion of some of its opponents. Consider what the Australian power house Andrew Symonds had to say on it when he arrived in India for the 7 one day matches: "We have had a very successful side and I think watching how we celebrate and how they celebrate, I think we have been pretty humble in the way we have gone about it.”

He did not stop at just hinting at the long period of their reign as champions of the Test cricket and 50 over one day matches and the matter of fact acceptance of their domination among his countrymen. He further opined, "And personally, I think they have got far too carried away with their celebrations."

Reacting to the celebrations, he was honest enough to let people into the heart that had been seared by the humiliating defeats, first at the hands of Zimbabwe and then India that sent the brash Aussies crashing out of the Twenty20 World Cup. He said, "Something gets triggered inside of you, something is burning inside of you - it is your will for success or your animal instinct that wants to bring another team down."We have been at the top for so long, it is like someone has taken the favourite thing you own from you and you want it back."

In fact this explains the wild and unending bouts of celebrations. Aussies might have owned a toy and the world might have accepted that the toy belongs to them but it is a toy that has been coveted by others too. It was a toy that was for a few months snatched by Michael Vaughan’s Englishmen when they prised the ashes out of the bosom of Ricky Ponting in the summer of 2005. The celebration of the Englishmen had been long and hard though not of the same class and magnitude as witnessed by the world in India. However, the English euphoria was all too brief and even before the hangover began the Aussies had beaten them black and blue in Australia after a white wash. The toy was back with the Aussies!

In the ODIs, the story has been of an unending domination since Steve Waugh’s captaincy. The bravado and the arrogance that began with that famous ‘You just now dropped the World Cup, mate!’ remark by Steve Waugh to Herchelle Gibbs whose brashness was no patch on the Aussies has continued unabated. Their dominance is best demonstrated by the massive nature of the defeats that they have inflicted upon those who have pretended to be the inheritors of the world cup crown. The challenge of Pakistan in 1999, India in 2003 and Sri Lanka in 2007 was just swatted aside by the kangaroos.

The animal in Andrew Symonds is not surprisingly hissing at what he sees in India!

He, like many others, fails to understand that for much too long a billion strong nation has been craving for success in sporting arena. Ever since the western powers conspired to make astro-turf mandatory for hockey, the lone tag of Olympic champions has been robbed; ever since there has been a lone silver here and a paltry bronze there. This does not satisfy a people who boast of the oldest and the richest civilization of the world, especially when Indians have been fuelling the success of the developed countries with their talent and hard work in the field of information technology, medicine, physics, business and astro-physics.

Here is a country that has to bask in the glory of bronze and silver medals in sports that do not catch popular imagination and are not meant for collective participation, in the achievements of Kalpana Chawala and Sunita Williams who, some might feel, in renunciating the Indian citizenship have disparaged the lowly existence of boys and girls living in thousands of small towns and villages across this huge mass of land. The country has been craving and begging for heroes and champions to emerge and this is sometimes expressed in the inverse ratio to the celebration and lauding that caused the animal to rear its head in the heart of Andrew Symonds.

It is possible that the animal instinct in the collective psyche of the Aussies might prevail but there is a very good chance that it might not as the forces that they have to contend are of hitherto unknown nature. The Indian team today is not made up of the boys who came from the traditional and elite forts of Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata. The bulk of the Indian team today is made of Bunties from the small towns who have big dreams and are not afraid of the big world. Unlike the Bubblies and Bunties of the Bollywood movie, instead of stratagems the Dhonis and the Singhs, the Chawlas and the Sharmas, Srisanths and the Pathans of Indian team have after dreaming big worked ceaselessly and matched their skills with their opponents on the playfield fearlessly to achieve what was only in the realm of the dreams.

India has changed. In fact, even if we had not been noticing it was changing. The satellite television, communication networks and the information technology has been creating a world that is no longer a strange place for those who might be living in what till yesterday was fashionably called, backwaters. The opening up of the economy and the accelerated growth rate has created opportunities that can be grabbed by people with talent and confidence. The rough edges can then be taken care of by those who need them! As it is the youth has confidence and when it believes that it knows all that is needed to know it can exceed expectations.

The rise and success of Mahinder Singh Dhoni and his band of ‘who the hell do you think you are’ philosophy driven players has been in the making for quite some time. It can be argued that it all began when the rustic looking and ‘Rapid-ex’ English speaking Kapil Dev became the captain of the Indian team. He had replaced the suave Sunil Gavaskar from the old Mumbai club and that process had begun the replacement of the Vishwanaths, Prasannas and many other metro bred players with ‘chole-bathure’ flavor of Madan Lals and Amarnaths. The doors thus opened have now been completely knocked down. Today, the Indian captain can brag about the mental strength of the boys who have to fight their way to the big arena from the dusty towns they were born in.

The difference between the levels of infrastructure and attitude between the metros and the small towns is stark. In a metro the game is organized and therefore before a young boy gets a chance to bat or bowl he has to go through the drill of being properly ‘kitted’. Not so in the small towns. You do not even need the wickets. Anything would do for them and then with a bat and a ball thirteen players can get into an intense contest to emerge victorious. The battle, brought to an end by engulfing darkness, usually yields loud hurrahs for trophy. It is this India that is asserting itself today.

This is a phenomenon that can be seen in other sports too. The Indian football team no longer consists of players who come from the maidan of Kolkata. The inaccessible hill towns of north India, the terror torn Kashmir and the unknown towns and villages of dusty India too have been their representatives to don the Indian colours. The women hockey team is no longer dominated by players from Mumbai and Railways the bearer of the Anglo-Indian tradition in sports; it is more like the players from the ‘Chak De, India’ movie with even the poorest and the remotest areas finding representation.

What we are witnessing is a phenomenon where India is merging with Bharat, the margins are getting blurred and in the process the country is asserting its identity. It is a phenomenon that is demonstrated in all walks of life. There are metros like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore and then there are satellite and smaller metros like Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Cuttack, Lucknow etc that are today swarmed by the raw youth from villages and dusty towns, dreams in their eyes, steely determination in their heart to succeed so that they do not have to spend their lives in places that have little infrastructure and room to soar.

Yes, Andrew Symonds can nurse the animal that wants to bring down the opponent but the heart of India wants to soar to regions where none has been before.