Calypso Collapse

The Carribeans are simple people. There’s beer, there’s calypso and then there’s cricket. In between mundane things like work n family happen. When beer’s inside, sunshine outside and the sweet sound of Lara middling Mc Grath- its pure heaven,. If any of those bearded bajaans had been at the Brabourne they’d have sobbed the beer out of them or maybe they’d have hurled some empty bottles in the direction of the Windies dressing room.

The Windies, to sum it up, as Lara succinctly put it (much like his pull shot), had a stage fright. I know what they’re saying as I have gone through it in detail. Stage Fright for me began in class I when I couldn’t spell either Stage or Fright. I was pushed into Poetry recitation Competition by my English teacher simply because I had scored the most in English. The written word doesn’t guarantee Caesar like oratory else even Shakespeare would have been Churchill right? So after mumbling a mix of defiance, sorrow and the only two lines I could recall I ran back stage with that disease called stage fright. Then it grew with me and within, beating me to adolescence and by age 15 it had grown into a full adult inside me. I’ll relate how I grew out of it in my autobiography at age 65 so have patience.
Coming back to the Windies, they started off like a bunch of Sub Saharan Africans who had just seen water for the first time. There was a mix of greed, anxiety, joy, wonderment, gay abandon in the way they started batting. Especially Chanderpaul who looked like he had a flight to catch. He surely would have caught it cos he didn’t last long. Gayle got a peach of a delivery and before he had time to pad up, Lara was up close and personal with Pigeon. Mc Grath has a penchant to get his generation folks early. It helps if it’s Brian Lara. The Southpaw behind the stumps, no small name himself, favoured Pigeon feed with a stunning catch off the outside edge and all promise of a Lara Lashing was laid to rest. Post which it was easy to miss wickets as they seemed to be falling even as one blinked. 139 would have been a fighting total in a 20/20 game, but this was the longer version and the only 20/20 here seemed to be Ponting’s vision of the Champions Trophy. The rain threatened to to delay celebrations- ultimately Ponting duly snatched the cup from Pawar’s hands. Minister of Agriculture had just witnessed the Australian scythe at work.

India suffered the big stage fright at the 2003 World Cup. We lost it in over No 1 then when Zaheer Khan gave away 16 runs by trying to bowl too fast. Pakistan went through the same when they were bundled out for 123 in the 1999 World Cup final. The Windies too seemed to lose it in ten overs. Ironically they had the best run rate ever in those ten. Sadly enough the backbone of the team was unpadded n vegetating in the dressing room by them.

It takes a lot of maturity to manage a boat that’s running at full steam ahead. Not just in sport but in all walks of life. When we’re performing well, there never seems to be too much of a plan. All of us just ride the wave, the high. The Windies did that too n got winded. One can’t blame them for getting carried away. The bigger lesson lies with the Australians who might have lost some battles but they never lost the lesson. Mc Grath and Lee the spearheads got smeared over the park initially but Bracken delivered. They had a plan for every player and they stuck to that, The aborigines triumphed in primitive planning and execution. They deserve the game.