Tweet
Mumbai: The Indian team is winging its way tonight to the West Indies for the World Cup carrying a billion hopes and prayers of the country's cricket-crazy fans.
The game's followers are anxious to see Rahul Dravid's team emulate Kapil's Devils of 1983 by returning home with cricket's biggest catch.
Twenty-four years ago, a team that was hardly expected to cause a ripple in cricket's showpiece event turned the game upside down with its sterling show.
The crowning piece of that brilliant display was the toppling of two-time world champions - the all-conquering West Indies - from their pedestal in a memorable final at Lord's.
That team did not have the burden of expectations as the cricket fans in the country then were yet to be bewitched by the shortened form of the game.
The players themselves did not believe they had the wherewithal to conquer the world and were thus able to perform without the added pressure of a billion expectations.
The triumphant run of that team - despite a few hiccups on the way - has since transformed the lukewarm interest of the fans in the one-day game into something akin to religious following.
It is this extreme pressure that Dravid's team will have to surmount as well as the tough opposition on the field in the West Indies to make its tryst with eternal glory.
Anything less than a title triumph will be considered a failure, perhaps unfairly, by the vast majority of the fanatic followers of the game in the country.
The game's followers are anxious to see Rahul Dravid's team emulate Kapil's Devils of 1983 by returning home with cricket's biggest catch.
Twenty-four years ago, a team that was hardly expected to cause a ripple in cricket's showpiece event turned the game upside down with its sterling show.
The crowning piece of that brilliant display was the toppling of two-time world champions - the all-conquering West Indies - from their pedestal in a memorable final at Lord's.
That team did not have the burden of expectations as the cricket fans in the country then were yet to be bewitched by the shortened form of the game.
The players themselves did not believe they had the wherewithal to conquer the world and were thus able to perform without the added pressure of a billion expectations.
The triumphant run of that team - despite a few hiccups on the way - has since transformed the lukewarm interest of the fans in the one-day game into something akin to religious following.
It is this extreme pressure that Dravid's team will have to surmount as well as the tough opposition on the field in the West Indies to make its tryst with eternal glory.
Anything less than a title triumph will be considered a failure, perhaps unfairly, by the vast majority of the fanatic followers of the game in the country.
Comment