Notes From the World Cup: India Are Writing a Chapter in History

Can you believe this shit?

“The classics are books which exercise a particular influence, both when they imprint themselves on our imagination as unforgettable, and when they hide in the layers of memory disguised as the individual’s or the collective unconscious.”

Italo Calvino’s book, Why Read the Classics, starts with ten definitions and elaborations on what makes a book a classic. While most of those are specific to the experience of reading a book, this particular definition, point number three in the list, feels true for other things too. Think of the movie lodged deep inside your heart because you watched it with your family on a rainy New Year’s Eve, or the song you heard on loop after your first heartbreak, the one that did not need a Grammy nomination to be a permanent favourite. 

While a book, song, or film can capture your imagination years after composition, classics in sports operate differently. To truly experience them, one must be present while it unfurls around an air of jeopardy. Because, by the time I start a YouTube video about the West Indies pace attack from the '70s and '80s, the thumbnail and title have already laid out what’s coming. I know I am going to witness genius when I type Diego Maradona on the search bar. The videos are great but don’t have the same dramatic edge. 

My generation could not witness Maradona or that West Indies team redefine the boundaries of possibility. We had to inherit awe and wonder from our elders, and second-hand astonishment is not quite as organic. 

We did, however, watch the insane efficiency of 2000s Australia in real-time. Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting turned that canary yellow jersey into a danger signal. That Australian team barely ever lost, had gun players from top to bottom, and could call upon world beaters from their bench when one of their superstars needed a rest. They once won a World Cup, unbeaten, after Shane bloody Warne had to be sent back for failing a drug test. Michael Hussey made his international debut at 29 years of age. 

With awe came intense hatred and jealousy. Who bowls a champion team out for 120 in a World Cup final? What kind of a sick team scores 359 in the next World Cup final? And you have to be disgusting to win three World Cups in a row, two of them without blemish. Stop it, seriously.

That Australian side is the gold standard by which most of us measure international teams. And a big part of that jealousy came from the knowledge that nothing we ever produce would be as good as that. The benchmark was too high. We could have better batters and great bowlers, but not as good a unit.

Until now. Late last night, as the floodlights at Wankhede faded into the black Mumbai sky, creating a neon halo above the stadium’s roof, it was impossible not to think of Rohit Sharma’s India as a worthy match to Ricky Ponting and Steve Waugh’s Australia.

World Cup performances are not special indicators of talent, of course. Glen McGrath did not become a greater player for winning three on the trot, and Brian Lara did not lose a ray of shine for not performing in any of the five he played in. But World Cups are unique like the Olympics because they are closed competitions between the world’s best with higher stakes than anything else in the sport. They are, whether we like it or not, the grandest of stages. It means a lot to have an outing where you create something so special, that the rest of the field can only play catch-up.

Now that India have gone through ten matches at this tournament, unbeaten almost seems too sedate a tag to bestow on them. They have been in a different league from every other team, obliterating most and giving a sniff to very few. For forty-five minutes last night, every Indian fan was sweating bullets, and New Zealand still needed to get 150 at a ridiculous run rate. The closest India have come to a serious place of concern was when Virat Kohli skied a Josh Hazlewood ball with the score at 20-3. From the moment Mitchell Marsh dropped that catch, their race has moved to a different track. How distant does the sweaty evening of 8th October feel now?

Never before has an Indian ODI team married audacity with skill and efficiency like in this World Cup. Imagine scoring 398 in a World Cup semi-final; imagine being good enough to bag 700+ runs in 10 matches on your own; and imagine how insanely purple your patch needs to be to return 23 wickets at less than 10 runs per wicket. And, finally, imagine being the captain of this team, a legend of limited-overs cricket, a run-accumulator who can score multiple double centuries, and still give away all charm for the number next to your name just so that another number, somewhere at the bottom of a scorecard, is where you want it to be.

How many times does a team win a World Cup semi-final by 70 runs, and it becomes impossible to nail down one proper contender for the Player of The Match award? Mohammed Shami won it and nobody should have a problem with that. But he doesn’t get the platform without Shreyas Iyer’s pyrotechnics, which, in turn, doesn’t happen without the insurance document called Virat Kohli, who gets to return at his pace because Rohit Sharma blunted the new-ball threat within three overs. We haven’t even mentioned Shubman Gill’s 80 and KL Rahul’s late flourish, or Jasprit Bumrah and Kuldeep Yadav giving our breaths back after Daryl Mitchell briefly threatened to leave us gasping.

The true absurdity of this performance lies in its repetition. India has played out a full tournament like this. Three of their batters have scored more than 500 runs; four bowlers have taken more than 15 wickets. Everyone in the top five averages over 50 and scores at a strike rate of more than 90; four of the five main bowlers have an average of less than 25.

The absolute unit. Image source: Independent.

Last night could be labelled as the coronation of a batting emperor, and justified as that would be, it really was a decisive step towards the immortality of a team that has done everything possible to be known as one of the greatest ever. Well, everything, except one small detail.

On Sunday, India will face one of Australia or South Africa. As much as the eternal fan in me would want South Africa to progress, it might make for better symmetry for Rohit Sharma’s India to climb atop a mountain beating the same canary yellow jersey that was once the symbol of an insurmountable peak. At this point, I realise I’m getting ahead of myself. No one is entitled to a win, and Australia could very well make these aspersions look silly and land another title, their fifth in the last seven. 

But what Rohit Sharma, Rahul Dravid, and that dressing room will always have, regardless of how Sunday turns out, is a show that evoked the classics.

“A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading.”