Sport.

         When it comes to sport, I am on most occasions, a sceptic. Perhaps it is the result of years of being the goal-keeper and wanting to be the wicket-keeper where I could observe the match from a (at least I thought so then) vantage point. Or perhaps it's the result of being told, trained, indoctrinated(all very stupidly of course) from a very young age that 'cranius' was always better than citius, altius and fortius. It must be added though, that the coverage of "sporting glory" didn't help. Sport and sport journalism thrive on the overstatement, the sudden construction of a narrative of brilliance, the constant reinforcement and the establishment of a legend. However, the greater they are made, the harder we feel the fall and as sting operations and drugs brought down one hero after another, I was a part of that generation which could not watch a good game without speculating who had been bought and who was injecting what. Later, age;) and another layer of political socialization prompted me to look at sport as another manifestation of the various phenomena that were causing "harm" all around. While I tried not to be one who would watch a match in nervous anticipation and then pen down a stringent critique of corporatisation and sport, I still did cultivate (and continue to do so) a "healthy" degree of cynicism with regard to sporting "greatness".

        However as always there are those days, those moments, those magnificent displays when you cannot help but put aside every bit of various baggages and stand in awe of sheer genius. These are the moments when you forget how exclusive some sports are, how they are a stage for this, a reason for that and what not and feel your your entire soul being carried on a huge wave with those of innumerable others-up, down,up again and again down. Your speech turns guttural, your analysis loses all relevance and turns into a mere parody and the faint of heat and the truly passionate lose all ability to even glance at the contest. These are the briefest of moments, a flash and then, the world is the same again. Yet for that small instant in time, you feel something that is very difficult to describe, something that definitely varies from person to person yet calls on something similar. As Rafael Nadal said while answering a senseless question, “It’s impossible to describe how I feel,...”,. That moment of being at a loss for translation has to be brief, it would be sad otherwise and it is a never-ending pilgrimage in search of such moments that represents sport to me.

We saw a glowing stretch on that pilgrimage yesterday!