My comeback, Sport, World Cup and some perspective

Well to start off lemme just say the words masses of readers of this wildly popular blog have been dreaming of..."Yeh baby...i'm back". Famous words by Marvin, but actually hold good in this case.

Now that i'm back in Delhi for the summer i am going to regular with my writing. Actually inspite of being pretty busy n all i've also been super lazy. So when i did have free time, i preferred to sleep, watch a movie, chat with pals n do other stuff (i know what ur thinking.... "kids these days!!"). But i have been meaning to write for quite some time so now the enteries might seem about stuff that happened well in the past.
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With all the rampant speculation n mindnumbing news about India's World cup debacle cluttering up the media. Ofcourse as these things usually go, no real value-adding opinion is even remotely in the air or any such has been drowned. So that gives me an oppurtunity to use my favourite perspective quote, say what i think about sports n the World Cup:

"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."

- Douglas Adams

To attempt to kick a round object between two poles or send a bunch of feathers over a net or attempt to knock over three wooden sticks with a leather ball might appear to be some of the most pointless things that man can do. Yet it is this very pointlessness that gives sport its allure. At its best sport means nothing beyond itself because it is artificial, controlled, and the rules change to take in either popular sentiment or commercial interest.

It is also the most profound activity we can engage in; as a legendary football coach, said, sport is not a matter of life and death - it is more important. Countries have gone to war over sport; economies have improved or collapsed over world championships; dictatorships have been given legitimacy over a tournament. This is the irony of sport - it is a pointless exercise full of meaning; an evolutionary step.

Sport is a representation of life with its dangers, pressures and the need to make a thousand judgements that would affect the outcome. Sport can seep into life, but when the reverse happens it upsets the natural order of things. When real life breaks through and enters a sporting activity bringing with it death, it is unfair.

Therefore, to term India's departure from the World Cup a tragedy is ridiculous. Tragedy is when a coach is murdered. When a champion tennis player is stabbed oncourt. Tragedy is when a world champion driver is killed on the circuit. Tragedy is not to understand what is tragedy. Dropping a catch is not a tragedy, being thrown out of the World Cup because batsmen can't score runs is not a tragedy. In fact, it is a farce.

If you saw the Australia-South Africa encounter, you knew that India had no chance in this World Cup. These teams have taken the one-day game to a different plane altogether. Everything is based on physical fitness and the ability to think on the feet. Two qualities that India lacked. If anything, by their refusal to acknowledge the importance of fielding and fitness, India were actually taking the game backwards.

Shane Watson throwing down the stumps from the boundary to break a hundred run opening partnership is what it's all about. It turned the match, and perhaps the tournament itself.