The birth of belief

At 31 for two in the final of the World Cup, and with India’s best batsmen dismissed, only the generation that had followed the Lord’s Test of 1971 had any doubts. We were prepared for the worst ... The younger ones didn’t flinch. My son leaned over and bet the price of a Dream Theater CD that India would not only win, but win easily. He is a fan in the age of Sachin Tendulkar — confident, self-assured and with faith in the cricket team. A completely different animal from his father who is wracked by uncertainty and carries too many memories of promise collapsing at the last hurdle.

Has an era finally ended? The era of Doubting Thomases and the-other-team-will-win certainties? The era when the dominant emotion at an India match was not anticipation but anxiety, and everyone believed that even if India had to score 10 runs in 10 overs with 10 wickets in hand, they would somehow manage to screw it up? When Virender Sehwag says today that he always backs the opposition, he means it as a joke, as a way of proving to himself the sheer absurdity of such thinking. Not so long ago, that was the way to bet.