Finding someone to blame

Cricket has always aroused strong reactions in the subcontinent. Fans in the Indian subcontinent take the team’s wins and losses personally, soaring to great emotional heights with a six that wins the World Cup, then crashing to earth when the Test team is dismantled in England a few months later. Occasionally, the emotional spills over and cricketers have had their houses stoned and effigies burnt. In Mint, Sahil Tripathi writes that India’s cricketers deserve better and that there are more important things fans can get angry about.

Indeed, Indian cricketers have given the nation many hours of joy. And as Ramachandra Guha pointed out in his sociological history of Indian cricket, A Corner of a Foreign Field, more is demanded of the cricketers because they are the only ones who make Indians feel that their country matters in the pecking order, where it is at the top. They give Indians something to root for. So they have no choice but to win, which places a superhuman burden on 11 men—because the rest of the Indians can’t. And make no mistake, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, V.V.S. Laxman and their teammates, are more upset about the loss than any of the fans are. They can bounce back; it won’t be easy. But if they don’t, it is because they are facing a superior team. There is no shame in losing to the better team.