(Mehr Tarar is former Op-ed Editor, Daily Times, Pakistan)
When Indians - all 1,267,401,849 of them, give or take the few who think cricket exited the subcontinent with the British, and of course, Ram Gopal Verma - cheer for their team, the noise is enough to overwhelm the cheering 23,787,600 Australians - give or take the few who think their team has won a few too many World Cups for this final to be very exciting. The 55-45 (reportedly) Indian-Australian crowd at the Sydney stadium watched the 2015 World Cup Semi-Final with breaths that were bated, mannats that were promised, duas that were as intense as the gaalis were loud, and cheers as raucous as the boos. The stereotypical subcontinental response. Aussie supporters were mostly just loud.
Honestly, I don't know how most cricket-viewing Pakistanis reacted to the India-Australia semifinal, which quite frankly became a damp squib after the huge Aussie inning. Ah, the sheer brilliance of the Australians. The magnificent method to their game. The palpable confidence - often correctly mistaken for arrogance - the precise shots, the immaculate fielding, the calculated bowling, the unhurried running, it's an absolute pleasure to watch the Aussies play. Any given day. Just not when the team being smashed to smithereens is mine. Or yours.
Back to March 26. Being unwell, and sleepless, I spent the entire day drifting in and out of a state of half-sleep, and in that twilight zone, I followed the match on Twitter. My cricket-viewing is regimented: I only watch the second inning. After getting twitter-harangued the day before by Pakistanis who tweet-shouted at me for announcing my support for the Indian team for the semi-final, I was suitably reassured by an equal number of my Pakistani tweeples of their support for India. To me it's simple: I'd support a South Asian team if it's pitted against a gori team. Call it the residue of outrage against colonialism, albeit the coloniser British exited the World Cup faster than Kim Kardashian posting a selfie.
Now what was it that made me start writing this lazy Friday in Lahore? Ah, Pakistanis' reaction to the match and the defeat. Yep, there was the predictable guffaws and jeers that normally follow an Indian defeat (replace that with Pakistani and you get an almost identical reaction in India, right?). Despite having received an ignominious drubbing by the Aussies in the quarterfinal, many Pakistanis cheered for Australia against India. And before many chalk it up to the typical, expected behaviour from the "traditional rival", let me elaborate the two reasons that were partly responsible for the Pak-elicited booing for Team India: the ad and the hashtag. Yes. Those.
And the nationalistic-cum-simplistic-cum-sentimental-cum-arrogant hashtag #WeWontGiveItBack. I mean, seriously? What are you? 12? A bunch of bullies daring a group of second-graders in a schoolyard? The #TeamBlue played splendid cricket, but it's the blah-cheering of the Indian tweeples egged on by the TRP-driven #TVchannels who hashtagged #Indianteam's #WorldCup outcome before the team even celebrated its #firstwin (yeah, yeah over the #TeamPakistan...yaad hai sab hamain). Hashtagging is cute. When you're 16. Or a PR wiz.
Being a part of the tiny-but-determined group (on my timeline) of cheer-for-Team-India, feeling dismayed at the bashing the Indian team got from a certain (read maniacal) segment of Indian media, it was awful to see the lovely Anushka Sharma being blamed for not just her boyfriend, Viral Kohli's, one-run inning, but for the Indian team's defeat.
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