Dudurudh

I am penning these thoughts down because I want to hold on to this feeling a little bit. Everything sucks and sporting events are distractions from things that matter. This is a truism. But life is filled with largely shitty stretches of solitude, disappointment and mundane depression that is only rarely punctuated by fleeting moments (only moments) of truly distilled joy and community. RCB making it through to the qualifiers of this year’s IPL is one such moment. It won’t last – almost certainly this team will jinx itself into another trophyless, disappointing end – and yet, this season will feel special because of the circumstances of the come back.

That is a rational feeling. The exhilaration of winning 6 consecutive games after a 7 game losing streak, is normal. But it’s the irrational that makes sport interesting.

This evening i was watching Vinay Pathak perform Nothing Like Lear at Jagriti Theatre in Whitefield. The hour and a half long show was at the same time as the start of the RCB game. By the time it ended, RCB was in the 17th over and batting brilliantly (although i had missed all of it). As i drove on outer ring road, the team scored close to 50 runs in the remaining 3 overs.

I stepped out of my car, into my friend’s front porch when Glen Maxwell picked up CSK’s first wicket. I stopped in my tracks. It’s going well. I shouldn’t move. Leave everything as it is and go back to the car, i thought to myself. In the next 40 minutes or so, CSK would pull the game back and i began to get uneasy. I told my friends that i must leave, got in my car and drove back to outer ring road. From the time my tyres hit the road, 4 wickets fell in 5 overs. At some point, i decided this was a dumb coincidence and that i should head home and suddenly, Jadeja and Dhoni began wrestling back control. I turned back (once again) immediately towards outer ring road and lo and behold, Dhoni hits a massive six but almost immediately gets out. Eventually, RCB squeezed a win out of nothing and judging purely by an analysis of the last 1.5 hours and particularly the past 45 minutes of me driving in circles on ORR, i had everything to do with it, obviously (as i am sure, you did too in some similarly delusional way).

This is the irrationality of sport. The ability to scrape at the barrel’s bottom for the minutest possibilities of hope (and sometimes even finding it) and believing in something including things that one could fairly safely categorize as superstition. In fact, that’s not the irrationality of sport. It’s the irrationality of hope itself.

Whether RCB wins this tournament or not is almost irrelevant. The only thing worthwhile thats comes from sport is hope and a sense of belonging. I felt both today. And really, that’s all that ever matters