It's the Hope that Kills You

For years I’d thought that the Indian cricket team lacked the sort of killer instinct you’d often associate with other teams when they’re on a roll. That they didn’t have the sort of ruthless streak that would see them crush the opposition by 200-odd runs, or chase down a 50-over target in less than 20 overs. You’d often hear about the ruthless Aussies thrashing the English, or the Sri Lankans running rings around the hapless Zimbabweans, or the Pakistanis walloping the Kiwis into submission. But with India, that was never the case – our cricket team would never mop the floor with their opponents as if they were a dirty rag cloth, or make mincemeat out of them in an unparalleled lesson in butchery, or take down their pants, press it neatly and return it to them to show them how it’s done, or steamroller them in a manner reminiscent of someone using earth-moving equipment to paste wallpaper, or pulverize them right down to a sub-atomic level, or…well, you get the drift.

Think about it – if we ever scored 300-plus while batting first in an ODI, did you ever feel safe? Or were you biting your nails in fear that Ajit Agarkar and Ashish Nehra might be generous to the extreme, with a regular and timely supply of leg-side half volleys and a dozen wides down the leg side, and contrive to gift the opponents a victory? I remember a match where we scored some 410-odd runs against Sri Lanka, yet somehow managed to end up winning that match by a mere 5 runs!

It was not that we always snatched defeat from the jaws of defeat or anything. Well, we did that sometimes, but more often than that, we would be in this position where we would appear determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and just when the jaws of defeat were about to close in on us we would get right out and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, although the jaws should ideally have been of victory in the first place anyway. If that sounds a little confusing, let’s go back to the Sri Lanka match where we scored 410 or so. Jaws of victory! But instead of ruthlessly crushing the Sri Lankans, we allowed them to canter to 310/1. Jaws of defeat! That’s when we woke up, fought back and finally won the match by about 5 runs or so. See what I mean?

I always wondered why this was the case? Perhaps it was the lack of a killer instinct – Indians have often been accused of that since the time we started playing sports. Or maybe it was just that we were really good sports – we wanted to give the other team a fair chance – let them make a match of it, so that it felt more like sport rather than, say, someone using a machine gun to kill a mosquito.

After our latest test victory over the English, however, I’m convinced that neither of the above is the case. In fact, the Indian team is actually far more devious, cruel and ruthless than we give them credit for. The answer to this lies in the John Cleese quote “I can take the despair, it’s the hope that kills me.”

Imagine this: you’re an average English cricket supporter that’s resigned yourself to a lifetime of mediocre performances from your national cricket team. Every two years your team lines up to have their asses handed back to them by the Aussies in the Ashes, sub-continental visits lead to predictable debacles as your batsmen cannot handle spin and you stumble from one disappointment to the other – crashing out of world cups, suffering spectacular batting collapses, and so on. And then, all of a sudden it all changes – your team has suddenly started winning, you’ve reclaimed the Ashes and you’re now World No.1, having dethroned the Indians from their perch by thrashing them 4-0 and foiling the BCCI’s dastardly plot of world domination. Suddenly, there’s hope – the India tour may not be so bad this time, you think your team has a chance. You’re no longer sullenly watching the match expecting India to score 500 and then bundle your team out for under 200. But wait – that’s precisely what happens. So you give it up – yeah, your team had a good run, but maybe this is a frontier too far to breach. So you get comfortably numb as you watch your team being gently taken apart by the Indian spinners. You know there’s no chance in hell of saving the test, you know that everything’s already assumed the shape of a pear, but you still watch it out of sheer loyalty, even though it’ll probably test your capacity to inflict self-harm.

But…hang on, what’s happening here? The Indians have suddenly stopped taking wickets after enforcing the follow-on, your batsmen seem comfortable at the crease and you still have 5 wickets in hand going into the final day? Could this really be? Your start dreaming, recollecting past instances of dogged rearguard actions and thinking that this might just be another addition to that collection of fond cricket memories. You start hoping…only to see your team bundled out by lunch the next day as the Indians canter to victory. Isn’t this whole roller coaster far tougher to deal with than a match where a crushing defeat seemed a foregone conclusion from Day 1?

And this is what the Indians have specialized in; against all teams – they would never win in a straightforward manner – it’s always about dangling that little carrot called hope before cruelly yanking it away. It was all part of a great, evil master plan, a plan that’s so much more soul-destroying and spirit crushing than a hammering where you never stood a chance. 

Of course, if you’d prefer your aggression to be more upfront, ruthless and carried with a touch of arrogance, there’s always the BCCI to fall back on.