Bowled over

The countdown is finally over. Every statistic has been churned though busily humming computers, the bookies and the pundits have delivered their verdicts. But today when the English and Sri Lankan skippers step forth for the toss — given the mercurial English weather gods, make that if — all of that will count for nothing in this funny old game of glorious uncertainties. And the subcontinent will take a well-earned respite from real life. Stock quotations, snakes and ladders politics, the relentless heat wave will cease to be the stuff of passionate parleys. For six weeks — all six of them, hopes every Indian follower of cricket — the dynamics of daily conversation will be altogether different. It will be Sachin Tendulkar’s magic bat and his aching back, the grey clouds and the mystifying Duckworth and Lewis rain formula, Shoaib Akhtar’s dubious action and Shane Warne’s lean patch, South Africa’s uncanny choke trick and the super-six wannabes.

Cricket has always been more than just a sport, most of allin India; it’s a veritable microcosm of the confusing world at large. Scientists may hold forth that a self-fulfilling computer game called Life is as close an approximation as we can get to the universe, but it is in the interplay of an array of variables that cricket devotees detect a certain order amidst the chaos of their lives. Individual glory, team spirit, whimsical lady luck, conspiring puppeteers, unpredictable weather, critical pitch conditions, the propelling power of a nation’s mood. To all this, this summer millions will add their collective hopes and individual superstitions in the most escapist of sporting extravaganzas. And even as they hum along with jingles churned out by tricolour-cloaked sponsors and calculate run rates and dot balls, they will set stringent standards for the 11 men in blue, standards that have all but been consigned to the history books in other arenas of public life: gentlemanly sportsmanship, instinctive fightbacks, an uncompromising pursuit of excellence. And inbetween the connoisseurs will delight in the hands-on captaincy of Hansie Cronje, the gritty persistence of Wasim Akram and the breathtaking talent of Tendulkar and Brian Lara.

But through it all, it is the glorious uncertainties everyone will bank on, not only to escape the humdrum certainties of daily life, but also to transform India from the underdog to the dark horse. Perhaps the most enchanting uncertainties of this World Cup will unfold in the coming weeks. For all the frenzied speculation about favourites and odds before the tournaments, things have never really gone according to the script in this four-yearly carnival. Who would have thought India would romp home in 1983 and that Kapil Dev would leave an indelible stamp with his mammoth innings of 175, that Sri Lanka would rewrite the rules of the game with their early overs onslaught in 1996, or that a Kiwi spinner would open the bowling with such success in 1992? Who will it be this time?