Notes From the World Cup: Old Guard, Floodlights, and the "Why"

A Kiwi in India, two Indians in Australia

World Cups make for terrific bookends. Their episodic nature gives players and teams a clean break, a chance to refresh and reload. Old life gives way to new, one story withers while another blooms. Four years is long enough to see everything change. The promising understudy becomes the lead and yesterday’s champion discovers their reflexes have gone. The gap between cycles makes rust visible in ways a continuous calendar doesn’t.

This Women’s ODI World Cup will be the last chapter in international cricket for many. Chamari Athapaththu, 35, has announced that this is her last major tournament. Safe to say Udeshika Prabodhani and Inoka Ramaweera, both nearing forty, will call time soon too. Harmanpreet Kaur is 37 soon, so watch out for a social media post.

This week, a giant of the game took her last lap in ODI cricket. Sophie Devine, captain of New Zealand for five years, force of nature for nineteen, walked off ODI cricket embraced by a guard of honour. She’s 36, so it’s unlikely there’s much T20 cricket left in her tank either. The end is nigh.

Image credit: Reddit

After the match, Devine, voice breaking, eyes red and moist, spoke about the motivation that’s driven her for nearly two decades: “Why do you play? I think it’s so important - what’s your why and why do you keep turning up?”

She’s gone out firing. She scored a century in New Zealand’s tournament-opener against Australia, an 85 against South Africa, and a couple of other handy knocks here and there.

Devine is New Zealand’s third-highest ever run-scorer and second-highest wicket taker, captain of a World Cup-winning side, and a former hockey international. But, as Gomesh writes beautifully here, she will be remembered for much more. In 2021, as athletes around the world were still figuring out what labels to give the knot in their stomach while bouncing between bio-bubbles, Devine opened the conversation about mental health. “I can share my stories with others to know it’s okay to be able to step away. It’s not just athletes, it’s everyone. We need to create that space for people to be able to talk about mental health.”

Devine is the kind of athlete on whose shoulders the word hero falls easily. The kind you pass over to the next generation through footage and stories. I sometimes feel it is no coincidence that she’s a Kiwi. There’s something in the New Zealand air that makes a Martin Crowe, a Jonah Lomu, a Kane Williamson, and a Sophie Devine.

Her impending retirement was both a trigger and excuse for a thought spiral about legacies. This week’s been conducive to that kind of contemplation.

In a different continent, the Aussie and Indian men have been playing an ODI series. Usually, during a World Cup month, everything outside becomes a blur. The timings of these games - 9 am starts - have allowed a bit of straddling. A large chunk of the men’s game would be done before the pitch report of the Women’s World Cup match.

Truth told, there is a lot of emptiness to this ODI series. Australia don’t usually host cricket in October - their cricket season starts from the middle of November. But here we are, because who says no to an India tour? India, meanwhile, are in the middle of their home Test season. A bunch of their guys had to take the Mumbai to Melbourne flight for a quick fortnight before they board the return to play a Test series against South Africa. There isn’t even a major men’s ODI tournament coming up, to make sense of this untimely run.

The attendances at Perth, Adelaide, and Sydney belied the lack of context. Sydney, in fact, was a blanket of blue. It was simple: Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli were playing cricket. That was alluring enough. It had been eight months since their last sighting in navy blue helmets with the BCCI crest and India flag. In between, the Test team entered turbulence and emerged grittier. The T20 unit is charting new territory, full of shots and swagger.

Which leaves ODI cricket - the only international format Rohit and Virat play now, and the one cricket has the least time for. That brings gaps in the calendar, long periods of nothingness as the world gets younger outside their windows. It makes us, ringside, worry about the corroding power of time.

Suddenly, every frame of theirs has become overwrought with meaning. Rohit’s lost ten kilos, and it’s showing. Is he moving better on the field? Difficult to tell, but the shirt hangs a little loose on him. Virat looks as fit as a 25-year-old, just with a denser beard than we remember him with. He recently made a joke about having to colour one’s hair, and knowing that you’re getting too old for cricket. Must be some premium quality hair dye, then.

We weren’t even watching for the runs anymore. What more does one learn about batters with 10,000 ODI runs? No, this was about the sights and the sounds. Eight months can seem like nothing, but in the speed with which cricket, especially Indian cricket, moves, it can seem like an eternity. At their ages, that kind of a gap takes more than it gives.

I remember tuning into some grainy livestream of Brazil vs Romania in 2011, Ronaldo’s farewell game, and partly tearing up. Ronaldo had been my first football hero. He could barely move now. His body wasn’t merely bloated like other older athletes when they move away from their playing routines. He was, quite evidently, in the obesity zone. Thyroid, knee surgeries, and the lifestyle of a Brazilian superstar had left their mark.

Neymar, then nineteen years old, rapidly becoming a global football name, passed a ball sidewards, which Ronaldo couldn’t reach. At one point, the Romania players stopped running, to let Ronaldo have a shot at goal. This was the man who used to be a lightning bolt on the pitch; who, at nineteen years of age, left an old English coach with his hands on his head. When Ronaldo left the pitch to a minute of richly-deserved standing ovation, I felt worse about having to watch him like this than about him leaving.

It was a rude reminder of the brutal experience of watching greats dissolve. You can deal with a string of poor performances, even the feeling of wanting them to leave; you don’t ever want this.

That’s the great fear while watching Rohit and Virat now. Last season’s Test series in Australia didn’t help - these two could barely put bat to ball on most days. ODI cricket, with its forgiving playing conditions and mellower rhythms, allows them the little space they need to stretch out. But after eight months of nothing, how much of their muscle memory would they have retained, and how much is gone?

The first two ODIs here went the way the Test matches last year had. Virat scored two ducks, late to the ball, balance awry, bat and feet in different postcodes. Rohit struggled and scraped and nudged to some runs. Only he and his guardian angel know how he survived Josh Hazlewood’s searing spell at Adelaide.

Only Sydney left.

There’s another aspect with this “return”. India, too, are working on a World Cup cycle. The next men’s ODI World Cup is in October 2027, precisely two years from now. And while sports science has worked miracles for longevity, at 36 and 38, one can only look so far ahead. Limbs and abs can be trained in the gym; their eyes and reflexes, unfortunately, will rust. Especially if you aren’t playing some form of domestic cricket, which these two are reluctant to do.

So, their low scores now carry a bit of weight. It’s no more a question of them finding their way into form at some point. India, at long last, have a brave chief of selectors who has ignored the reverb of their names and acknowledged the team’s World Cup aspirations. Rohit and Virat need runs and rhythm. The spots are still theirs, the permanence isn’t.

Sydney, that way, was a bit scary. Will the walls close in a little more?

Not yet. Sydney was glorious, cinematic, vintage. There’s something particular about India playing ODI cricket under floodlights - it transforms the game into something else entirely. This is the aesthetic that turned cricket from an Anglo inheritance into a subcontinental artefact, complete with its own sounds and rhythms. The love affair that started with the hazy evenings of the Hero Cup found its true peak with the 1996 World Cup and the Titan Cup. Cricket was theirs.

Rohit Sharma was nine years old during the ‘96 World Cup; Virat seven. They grew up in an India where ODI cricket was the party. Both made their names in this format. It remains their favourite, the one whose tempos they understand like the lines on their palms.

In Sydney, India played under the floodlights, chasing a competitive but under-par total. Rohit and Virat turned the clock back.

Credit: Reuters

Rohit hit those creamy fours where his arms extend languidly from the body, not a sinew moved in violence; Virat uncocked a straight drive past the umpire - the kind that makes coaches and watchers purr. Rohit tapped the ball into the stands, each shot hit with the same elegance but travelling a few metres longer than the last; Virat ran his singles and doubles like a hare. Rohit went big; Virat held the game on a leash until the final run was hit.

Rohit Sharma scored his 50th international century; Virat Kohli crossed over to become the second highest run-scorer in ODI cricket. Didn’t mean a thing. The numbers had blurred behind the crisp percussion of their bats. For a while, it felt like they were on auto-pilot, guiding the chase like we were all in this together, a decade younger. To quote the eternally quotable Ravi Shastri, “the two dogs have some sting left in them.”

Will they make it to 2027? Who knows. They’re definitely on their last laps. The only hope from whatever’s left is that they don’t stumble and fumble through to the end. These two deserve to reach the finishing tape upright, legs hovering above the ground mid-sprint, chest leading the body. Taking a leaf out of Sophie Devine’s book, as long as they’re within sight of their “why”, they’ll be alright. And, with them, so will we.