AUGUST19, 2019 INDIATODAY 59in the world. In the years immediately following our World
Cup triumph, this superiority waxed and waned, dimmed and
brightened, but the screaming, shouting, blue shirt-ripping
triumphalism did not waver over the next 30 years.
Of late, though, things have changed. With the Indian team
going from being underdogs to bullying overdogs, this trium-
phalism has transformed into something truly ugly. The final
stage of this mutation took place between 2001 and 2011 and
is related to, among other things, our improved game, the bur-
geoning of the Indian TV audience to mammoth proportions
and the huge sports industry the IPL has become.
Alongside this growth of economic clout is the increas-
ing display of aggression onfield by players. Around 2001 (or
possibly a little earlier) our players started becoming infected
by what one could call “Aussie-itis” or “Oz-itis”—the extreme
sledging and aggressive physical projections perfected into an
art form by Steve Waugh’s famous Australians. “Tit-for-Tat”,
“toe to toe”, “give as good as you get” and other such phrases
became mantras in our press, with our players also spouting
these clichés in interviews and such. Some of the Indian team’s
retaliations worked, some didn’t. During the 2001 Test series,
Ganguly got up Waugh’s nose by making him wait for the toss,
Dravid told three hulking Australians surrounding him to “F***
off”, yielding desirable results. But then came the ridiculous
sight of Zaheer Khan trying to sledge Matthew Hayden in the
2003 World Cup final in Johannesburg. Hayden was flaying
Zaheer’s bowling. Hayden was the master of sledging and this
sort of a thing pumped him up; Zaheer, an amateur, struggled
for an invective in a language not his own, but eventually got
carted across the ground, both verbally and cricket-wise.
B
y the time the next batch of young Indian men
put on the country’s colours, the sledging had
become as indispensable as batting, bowling and
fielding skills. When I bumped into one of these
young turks (now a waning senior of fluctuating
presence in the team) and suggested that he was being over-
aggressive, he snarled into the distance, ‘No, no, nutthhing!
Weeyyavtu givvidbag tudem!’
The Aussies infected us, but then we added our own strain
to the infection. The Aussies might be racist, macho and thug-
gish, they may also be cheats, but there is no trace of jingoism or
militarism in their presentation. Off the field, these Australian
men are seen looking after their small babies; even on-field,
if there is an addition to their cricketing clothes, it’s to sup-
port some cause, such as the fight against breast cancer; their
nationalism or political beliefs are kept well out of sight. We, on
the other hand, go from the absurd to the ridiculous. Our team
walks out wearing military caps in an international match to
“show support for our soldiers”; Mahendra Singh Dhoni tags his
regimental insignia on to his wicket-keeping gloves in a World
Cup; insisting we need to differentiate ourselves from England’s
blue, we add one particular colour from our flag
to our altered kit and it just happens to be the
colour preferred by the ruling political party.
You understand what a really wealthy country
is when you see extremely well-to-do people hap-
pily taking trams to the supermarket. Similarly,
I understood something about a country that’s
really rich in sporting terms, when an Australian
cricket fan once told me, “I’m bloody bored of us
always winning like machines. I’d really like to see
this Ponting side get stuffed, I just don’t like their
style of cricket!” While sportsmen are notoriously
stupid politically and usually tend to veer towards
reactionary strongmen leaders (look at pictures
of Recep Erdogan attending Mesut Özil’s wed-
ding), there are also exceptions. Look at the major
American football stars refusing to stand for the
national anthem, choosing to kneel instead in
protest of US president Donald Trump’s policies,
or Megan Rapinoe showing Trump her middle
digit after winning the World Cup.
While we in India are very far from Australia’s
wide-ranging sporting success, we are the cricket-
ing world’s boorish nouveau riche and there was
some odd satisfaction in seeing the obnoxiously
cocky Indian team go down to New Zealand
(which would not have been there had we lost to
Pakistan, Australia or England) in the semi-
finals. As for protests, true independence and true
patriotism (and, yes, true sporting wealth) will be
evident when some internationally successful In-
dian sportswoman or sportsman fearlessly stands
up to an Indian government on a political issue.Ruchir Joshi is a film-maker and writerFOLLOWINGOUR
1983 WORLDCUP
TRIUMPH,INDIA'S
SUPERIORITYWAXED
AND WANED,BUT
THE SCREAMING,
SHOUTING, BLUE
SHIRT-RIPPING
TRIUMPHALISM DID
NOT WAVER OVER
THE NEXT 30 YEARS