India’s T20 World Cup campaign got off, as expected, with a win against rank outsiders Afghanistan. While the victory was expected, this was a match I was looking forward to watching, purely out of a curiosity about the romance surrounding Afghanistan’s march to probably their first major sporting event.
Sports, in its basic form, is just another form of entertainment, like the movies. Of course, the passion and fervor with which some people follow the games makes it seem like the sportsmen are sometimes going off to war for their country. Though I do love watching football and to a lesser extent, cricket, I have always guffawed at the notion people (spectators) have that people who play international sports should be treating it as almost a war and should not be swayed by commercial concerns. Pretty silly, if you ask me. A sportsperson knows he will be at the top for only a short period in his life, and there is absolutely nothing wrong if he uses that period to do as well as he can. As long as he gives it his all on the field.
However, there are times, when sports manages to transcend the glitz and gold that seems to symbolize the best sporting endeavors these days. Every once in a while, a story like the Afghans’ comes along which makes you realize the power this medium can have over nations. I don’t know how much of it is mere romance created by the media, but it does bring a lump to the throat to think of these men who made their way from refugee camps in a country which has been ravaged by endless wars, as one group after another lay claim to its disillusioned landscape and people. I wonder how hopeless the situation would have seemed for these men just a few years back when the oppressive rule of the Taliban was coming to an end in the bloodiest circumstances possible. They joined the lower divisions of the cricket leagues a mere few years back. And now they find themselves on the world stage, after barely missing the qualification to the 50 over event next year. Whatever their chances, I’m sure the Afghans savored the moment when their national anthem was played at the early start in the St. Lucia stadium.
This is not the only occasion this has happened. I remember being touched when I read towards the end of the last century how the then Yugoslav football players payed their own way to be a part of the global event that is the Football world cup at France ’98, as the country just didn’t have the funds. Now, of course, there is no more Yugoslavia. Similarly, what a source of pride it was for Croatia when their team not only qualified but, astonishingly, finished third at the same event. Theirs was a young nation then, and this would have helped them. Football, being almost a religion in itself, would have a lot more of these stories. However, there are significant instances of the power of sport in other disciplines as well. The black power salute by American athletes at the 1960 Olympics. Or how cricket passed a big message to the rest of the world when they banned South Africa from international competition for more than 2 decades, on account of the human rights violations under the despicable apartheid governments. When the same country finally got rid of the shackles of apartheid, Nelson Mandela saw the rugby world cup which South Africa hosted and won in 1995 as a means of uniting the country after years of separation between the whites and other races.
Afghanistan will, in all probability, not last beyond the first round in the West Indies. But they may have already won their own kind of battle. The most important one.
No comments:
Post a Comment