Opinion At 2023 World Cup, Indian cricket fans were the sore losers
Sportsmanship is an attitude that applies not just to sport but how we conduct ourselves in our daily lives.
Former Australia and England captains Ricky Ponting (left) and Nasser Hussain (right). 
The former captain of the England cricket team, Nasser Hussain, made a pertinent observation during the World Cup final on Sky Sports when he said, “It feels like this match is being played in an empty stadium. Have some shame, Indian fans!” Indeed, pretty early in the game, as soon as spectators figured out that the Aussies had out-planned hence out-played India, they sat quietly with glum faces, or left. Every boundary scored by Australia was followed by a resounding silence.
There were only a few reluctant claps for Travis Head’s century, arguably, one of the greatest knocks in international cricket lately.
The Narendra Modi stadium, touted to be the largest in the world may be a state-of-the-art facility but going by the graceless lack of sportsmanship displayed in Ahmedabad, perhaps, critical matches should be held in cosmopolitan cities where misplaced patriotic fervor isn’t a default setting.
Contrary to prevailing beliefs, nowhere does it say we need to be shamefaced about enjoying a first class game, irrespective of who’s winning. It is a tragedy of the times we live in, let us call it the either/or world of extremes, where, in too many aspects of existence, we’re compelled to vehemently choose “our side”. Apparently, it’s not appropriate to appreciate Australia’s cricketing skills when India was struggling because the black and white rhetoric that applied to politics has infiltrated sport, movies and music. Artificially polarised opinions have Bollywood scurrying for cover. According to a recent Washington Post piece, Hindi films and shows with religious or caste angles are shelved instantly, for fear of threat from rightwing activists. What happens when directors have to factor in hooliganism before telling a story? Nuance becomes risky and currently, giving imagination a free rein is fraught with danger. Forced compliance achieves nothing except to curb originality, which will make our viewing experiences a lot more boring.
The browbeaten Indian philosophically makes peace with the fact that the business of living involves doing a lot of things (publicly) that (privately) we don’t want to do. That’s life; you got to go along to get along. Conveniently yielding to an atmosphere of bullheaded certainty feels easier than the exhausting process of questioning a status quo.
Slogans like “Us vs Them” and “If you’re not with us you’re against us” are entrenched in the popular lexicon and enjoy a righteous legitimacy. Yet, intellectually, the route to that most overused word, happiness, lies in living authentically, which means reducing the gap between projection and reality.
Clarity, or some version of the truth rests between multiple perspectives and it’s only by holding an open discourse that we can hope to stumble on it. So, it doesn’t mean I don’t support my team if I clap when their opponent scores, just like it doesn’t mean I support Hamas if I express horror at the heartbreaking images of injured babies in Palestine.
Actually, it’s letting Indians off too easy by ascribing their petulant behavior towards the Australian team’s victory in Ahmedabad only to hyper-nationalism or jingoism. In plain language, they were uncouth and rude and we should be collectively cringing that the international press has labelled Indian fans as “pathetic and immature”.
Sportsmanship is an attitude that applies not just to sport but how we conduct ourselves in our daily lives. It’s the innate understanding that it’s pointless to take either winning or losing too seriously because everyone has some good days, and many, deeply humbling ones. It’s unfortunate that our failures occupy far more headspace than our victories but perhaps that is what is required to stay grounded. Human optimism instinctively makes room for the tantalising possibility that the next hour will be our finest, but when it’s not, we owe it to everybody to bear it stoically.
The writer is director, Hutkay Films
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