📢 On Rohit

Some words on India (finally) winning a World Cup

The image of the final for me was Rohit Sharma lying stomach-down, head on the grass after the cup was clinched. It was a sight that made me choke up. At that moment, I’d hazard a guess that he was thinking of November last year. I know I was.

This win can’t be seen without the context of that loss. 

November 19th birthed a type of trauma I’ve never experienced in sport before. I felt empty on the day but in the time since, that pain has only become more tangible. It’s been buried deep inside but it’s a well of sadness I regularly find myself tapping into. Even today, I can’t scroll past the Rohit sadboi reels on my feed from that day in Ahmedabad. I end up rewatching clips from earlier in the tournament, just to recapture that sense of hope in its pre-crushed state.

The reason for this intensity of pain is that the game wasn’t just a final. It was supposed to be a consecration for one of the greatest ODI sides of all time. A team, who in front of large seas of blue, had blown away all that had come before them. The brutality of their performances was intoxicating. The passion in the stands, electrifying. Nothing unites in India like cricket and for that one month, 1.3 billion felt like one. 

But in the months since that loss in the final, I’ve come to realise that a central part of my pathos was linked to Rohit. 

An Indian captain doesn’t just lead a team. He leads a nation. The 2023 World Cup came nearly two years into Rohit’s reign as captain but that tournament was when it felt he’d truly been accepted into the role by fans. The selflessness with which he played struck a chord. You could see that the team was enjoying their cricket. Their joy was infectious and you knew it stemmed from the atmosphere Rohit had helped create in the dressing room. 

The World Cup also allowed Rohit  to be vulnerable in a way he hadn’t before. He never hid away from how much winning the trophy would mean to him and later, didn’t disguise how much the loss had hurt him. He had been the carrier of our dreams and later, became the conduit for our pain. 

I remember a conversation I had with a couple of friends, where one of them remarked how they didn’t understand why sport evoked such strong emotions in people. The other friend presented an analogy that perfectly captured its essence.

“Think of it like a movie,” he said. 

“In a movie, the climax is always the hero saving the day. But in sport, the hero could die at the end.” 

That Rohit would have to finish his career without an ODI World Cup, without the fairytale ending in Ahmedabad felt like injustice. 

That loss will never not sting. But this T20 World Cup triumph, will help ease that pain for Rohit. And as a result, for us too. 

You don’t deserve anything in sport. But Rohit Sharma deserved to win a World Cup as captain.