Success and failure in sport do not depend on cheques and balances

The Pakistan Cricket Board fining its players five million Pakistani rupees each for failing to qualify for the semifinals is another in the list of bizarre decisions it has taken around the World T20. There’s nothing like kicking a team when it’s down!

The successful, the struggling, the nearly men all have to pay. Throwing money at a problem is seldom an effective way of solving it. Neither is doing the reverse. Success and failure in sport do not depend on cheques and balances.

Thirty years ago, at another World Cup, India beat Pakistan in a quarterfinal, and there were riots in that country. Indians remained smug, telling one another that such things would never happen here. One newspaper editorial called Pakistan’s defeat evidence of “the inherent superficiality of the Pakistani ‘nation’.”

And then it happened in India. Crowds in Kolkata rioted even as India were losing to Sri Lanka. India’s patronising disapproval of the overreaction in Pakistan now looked misplaced. One commentator called it the “lumpenisation of the middle class”. Theories flew thick and fast. Why did Wasim Akram pull out against India? Why did Mohammed Azharuddin choose to field on winning the toss?

Mike Marqusee wrote later, “In accounting for victory or defeat, the cock-up is generally to be preferred to the conspiracy theory.” But when you harness cricket to nation, conspiracy theories are inevitable.

So what will happen if India do not win this World Cup? It’s an interesting thought experiment.

It is unlikely the sky will fall, although it might appear that way if you follow television debates or that bane of the losing team anywhere – the trending hashtag.

Cricket has become a referendum on national temperament. Victory confirms destiny; defeat demands inquiry commissions. A loss is seen as a morality tale.

Fallout

The immediate consequence is noise. Former players will speak of ‘intent,’ something apparently measurable by modern gizmos. The captain will be analysed for his facial expressions. Did he smile too much? Did he not smile enough? And what of the coach? In a country that reads meaning into the silence of rocks, the raised eyebrow of a cricketer can trigger a week-long debate.

The search for ‘culprits’ will begin. The young will be called immature; the seniors seen as being past their best. The team management will be accused of thinking in straight lines in a game of loops and swerves. An expert will ask if the IPL which has made millionaires killed their ambition? The IPL will, however, be hailed as the nursery of champions when the team next wins something.

Administrators, meanwhile, will discover the therapeutic value of meetings. Committees will be formed, and words like ‘process’ and ‘pathway’ will be thrown about. The Board will promise introspection with all the assumed honesty of a political party which has lost an election.

For the players, a missed catch or a mistimed scoop will replay in their minds long after the television studios have found a new outrage. Social media, that vast theatre of instant expertise, will alternate between affection and amnesia, for heroes become has-beens quickly in the shortest format.

Something else might happen too. A new player will work a little harder in the nets. A senior pro will add a variation. A coach will whisper reassurance where the world shouts accusation. Indian cricket has known defeat before and knows how to handle it.

Tournaments are not morality plays. They are sporting events, subject to chance, form, and the thin margins that separate a six from a catch. In T20 cricket, chaos is not an intruder, it is a long-time resident. To demand inevitability from such a format is to misunderstand its very design.

If India do not win the World T20, there will be disappointment of course, even indignation. There will also be job losses, the coach being the time-tested candidate. But there will also be the continuity of a system too large, too passionate, and too invested to be undone by a fortnight of cricket. The team will be criticised, reconfigured, and resurrected.

And when the next tournament arrives, hope will return with indecent haste. For in Indian cricket, memory is short, expectation eternal, and redemption just one victory away.