Cricket and Optimism

Cricketers received a largely cold welcome, and had to be provided a thick security cover to avoid any mishap.

I have great respect for the journalist in Kuldip Nayar. He has always been one of my favourite political commentators. However, as he rightly says, he rarely strays from politics, one such occasion is this article on the Indian cricket team's dismal performance. In the first paragraph itself, he has criticized the failure of the team at the World Cup in harsh, impassioned and almost violent terms. Like most other ordinary people, the great Kuldip Nayar does not seem to realize that in sport, especially with cricket in India, it is not fair to come down so harshly upon the team. For one, as this editorial in the Hindu points out, it is not entirely surprising or shocking to see a dismal performance by a team ranked no. 6 in the world, and considering them favourites in the first place is utter folly and unrealistic expectations. I myself saw anger raging in the common room, where I watched the India-Bangladesh and India-Sri Lanka matches, spectators calling players names, slamming chairs, and getting violent and depressed about the team's failure. A broader issue is whether such an obsession and passion associated with cricket in India is justified at all when it is not the world leader in the game, or for that matter, probably never has been. Even the '83 World Cup win was a huge upset, almost minnows going on to win the Cup.
The need of the hour is to diversify public sport attention to other sports, which does not seem to happening despite various efforts (like PHL in Hockey).
Undue hype and overoptimism always results in unrealistic expectations, which is always a great gamble, because the odds simply aren't favourable. Hence, living in the reality and having reasonable expectations is optimism and not driving at 200 mph hoping that nothing will happen.