With this month of sporting madness coming to an end, I want to talk about a recently played semi-final event in a weeks-long sports competition that transcended sport as we know it. Wait…what? NCAA?...Butler?… VC who? Oh, no…sorry. I’m talking about the Cricket World Cup semi-final match between India and Pakistan. I’m sure you caught it. It’s only the most watched cricket game in the history of the world. Ok, maybe you didn’t.
This match was a heavy-weight battle between two bitter rivals, both on the field and in world politics. Many citizens of both countries commented prior to the event that it didn’t matter if the winner went on to claim the world cup, just as long as they won this match. In the days leading up to the event, the media was consumed with the questions of how this event would change the politics of their long standing dispute. Both prime ministers attended the event together as a sign of unity and goodwill, and hope for future collaboration. To say the least, there were a lot of hopes riding on the outcome of this match (by the way India won, but I still don’t understand what the final score was).
Indranil Mukherjee/AFP Photo/Newscom
The event got me thinking about sports, and the affect sport has on us individually and collectively - the hope we have at the beginning of a season, and the sucker-punch, kicked in the groin feeling I feel every January when the Baltimore Ravens get knocked out of the playoffs (similar to the feeling I get on April 15th with the Orioles). The outcome of sporting events is an extremely personal experience to many people. Just ask the billion-plus people on the Indian sub-continent. We tie personal success to the outcome which is why sport is inspiring, but sport can devastate; sport is enabling, and sport can be debilitating. We link our personal, communal, even national significance to our teams’ successes and failures. But all of the importance we give it can be dangerous, because sport is a ghost. Sport is untrustworthy, and sport is deceiving. Sport does not pay our bills, sport does not save our marriage, and sport does not sign peace treaties. The goodwill we feel, or the despair we endure, is fleeting and we are left right where we began before it started. The effort we spend in hoping for outcomes based on a sporting event, or in effort from releasing our frustrations, is wasted and could be better spent in productive endeavors. Sport can be our springboard, but we still need to carry through.
This doesn’t mean I won’t hang on the edge of my seat or scream at the TV. I love sports and I love the rollercoaster of emotions. But my hope is that at the end of the day, at the end of the season, regardless of the task, and regardless of the outcome we can all say with a smile on our faces “Well, there’s always next year.”
Song of the Day
In honor of restraining our emotions in response to events out of our control, a new hope for peace in South Asia, and the the loss of a visionary leader on this day in 1968, the song of the day is U2's "Pride (In The Name Of Love)."
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