India’s Cricket World Cup victory prompts memories of other sporting successes achieved in the face of gargantuan public expectation.
When Mahendra Singh Dhoni thumped Nuwan Kulasekara for six over wide mid-on to secure India’s World Cup final win over Sri Lanka on Saturday, 1.2 billion Indians were sent into rhapsody. Let’s not dwell on the sweeping numerical generalisation here. Let’s not diminish the magnitude of the occasion by suggesting that at least some of the population might be too occupied with day-to-day survival and abject poverty to give a fig about a game of cricket, that many don’t have access to television, or that – heaven forbid – there might just be a few Indians who simply don’t like the sport. No, for our purposes we shall suppose that every man, woman and child in the country was desperate for the national team to win back a trophy last captured in 1983; if it’s good enough for Sky TV, it’s good enough for Grubsport. Besides, the 1.2 billion figure doesn’t include the tens of millions of ex-pats around the globe, ALL of whom will have been equally ecstatic at the victory.
Of course Dhoni was brilliantly assisted by his team mates over the course of the tournament. Virender Sehwag, in my opinion the most entertaining batsman in the world, played like a millionaire, usually getting off the mark with a boundary and playing some thrilling innings that put opponents on the back foot from the word go. Clever left-armer Zaheer Kahn proved himself the best opening bowler in this form of the game; his guile and variation consistently foxed opposition batsmen and no-one in the tournament took more wickets than he did. Yuvraj Singh turned in world-class all-round performances that yielded no fewer than four man-of-the-match awards (and the man-of-the-tournament prize). And then there was dear old Sachin Tendulkar. Opening the batting with Sehwag, he amassed 482 runs at nearly a run a ball with an average of 53.55 and, perhaps surprisingly for a man not renowned for his power, hit more sixes than anyone. Not only that but he scored the 98th and 99th centuries of an international career stretching back to 1989 – a quite staggering feat.
Cricket in India inspires hyperbole like nothing else. It’s frequently likened to religion, its stars are treated like demi-gods, the television audiences are of truly biblical proportions and the Indian cricket board is the most powerful in the world game. Anyone who’s witnessed 90,000 going berserk at Eden Gardens will understand cricket’s significance in the national psyche. Meanwhile, the phenomenon that is the Indian Premier League has seen the frenzy surrounding the game (not to mention the money associated with it) reach stratospheric heights. And Tendulkar, Indian cricket’s favourite and most famous son, is more recognisable and adored than possibly any individual on the planet. They used to say Ian Botham emptied bars when he strode out to bat; Sachin empties entire cities when he makes his way to the crease. Sparsely-populated grounds fill to capacity within minutes (and when he’s out the numbers dwindle again just as quickly).
It’s against this backdrop that we arrive at the assumption that every single Indian was willing the side to win on Saturday. So let’s go with it and claim therefore that, at a single stroke, Dhoni made 20% of the world’s population wildly happy.
In fact, it was as much a collective sigh of relief as anything. That previous World Cup win in 1983 was a massive upset, Kapil Dev’s side defeating the previously indomitable West Indies in the Lord’s final thanks to inspired bowling spells from Mohinder Armanath and Madan Lal. Winning as the underdog is nothing like winning as favourite, however. Back then it was a heady cocktail of success made all the sweeter by the fact that no-one gave them a prayer. This year, it was a completely different kettle of Bombay duck. 1983 triggered a love affair with the one-day game in India, one that had threatened to break the nation’s heart with each unsuccessful World Cup campaign since. But heading into this year’s tournament, the team was at the top of the official One Day International rankings. They were joint hosts too, playing all their games on home soil. Unsurprisingly, they were installed as favourites for the title. In short, India expected.
Add to that the fact that it had been 28 long years since the gloriously unexpected triumph of Kapil’s heroes and it’s not difficult to imagine the soul-searching and unbearable heart-ache that another failure would have spawned. Take all the angst that we subject ourselves to in this country over the England football team’s winning nothing since 1966, multiply it by 20 and you’re still way off. If ever a sporting achievement could be brought about by the collective desire of the supporters, this was surely it.
Yet it so rarely works out that way. Sport, and life in general, isn’t like that. Just because we want something so badly does not make it happen. Except, in India’s case, they got what they wished for. All 1.2 billion of them.
Here are a few more examples of sporting success being delivered in the context of enormous expectation.
Carl Lewis: Los Angeles Olympics, 1984
As icons of the 1980s go, he’s right up there with leather ties and the Rubik’s Cube, is Carl Lewis. The very epitome of strutting, arrogant, cock-sure American-ness. And that flat-top! It would be easy for me to focus on Lewis the man, with all his ugly self-importance. Easy but churlish. (Although the look on his face as he crossed the line in 1988 behind Ben Johnson in what I regard as the greatest 100m race ever run – steroids and all – was priceless). Lewis’s sporting achievement in Los Angeles, though, was nothing short of staggering. Lest we forget, he aimed to match Jesse Owens by winning the 100m, 200m, long jump and 4 x 100m relay.
Unlike India’s cricketers, Lewis didn’t inspire quite the same level of national fervour. The United States as a whole was ambivalent towards ‘track and field’. The expectation that qualifies Lewis for this list, then, was an altogether more passive variant. It was just accepted, with a collective shoulder shrug, that he’d do it. In fact, the only criticism that can be levelled at his performances is that he made it look too easy and did nothing to dispel the widely-held view that he only had to turn up to collect.
He won the first of his golds in the 100m. In the Usain Bolt era where the world record is 9.58 seconds, Lewis’s winning time of 9.99 looks decidedly modest. But when you remember he beat the silver medallist home by all of 0.2 sec, you realise just how much better he was than anyone else. It was a similar story in the long jump as Lewis needed just one legal effort to seal it, leaping 8.54 metres, fully 30cm ahead of his nearest rival. Then there was his Olympic record of 19.80 sec in the 200m to bring him his third gold. Finally, he anchored the relay team home in a world record time of 37.83 seconds. His mission was complete.
Lewis may not have endeared himself to his public in the way that others here did. During the long jump competition, he was booed by the crowd for refusing to take his last four jumps; he knew he had the gold in the bag and wanted, quite sensibly, to save himself for the 200m. Then there was that personality of his and the cynical, naked ambition he displayed, stating quite openly – even prior to the Games – that he intended to ‘cash in’ on his forthcoming success. As it turned out, he was widely spurned by would-be sponsors. But for sheer self-belief, for delivering so emphatically on the outrageous goal that he’d set himself and that had been considered a foregone conclusion by the watching public, Lewis merits all the respect he gets. Grudging or otherwise.
Ali vs Foreman: Zaire, 1974
The Rumble In The Jungle is one of the best-documented sporting contests in history. I certainly don’t intend to compete with the likes of Norman Mailer by trying to describe and analyse the fight itself. What I will say is that part of the fascination for me is how Muhammad Ali first endeared himself to the Zairean people, then harnessed them to his advantage. In hindsight, and despite being an overwhelming bookies’ favourite, George Foreman didn’t stand a chance.
Ali had been on a charm offensive from the moment he set foot in the country, readily mingling with the locals, having kids run alongside him down the streets, and leading chants of “Ali, bomaye”, meaning “Ali, kill him” in the local language. When a sparring cut to Foreman’s eye led to a five-week delay in the fight, both men were required to stay in the country (that’s the sort of power a dictator who’s put up the $10m for the fight can wield). Ali used this time to nurture his burgeoning love affair with the locals, to whip them up still further and cement the bond. Foreman, by contrast, remained more aloof, holing himself up in his hotel room.
The feverish support that Ali had created in Zaire is all the more remarkable when you consider he could never have been adored so unconditionally back home. He was a draft dodger, for starters, and had seen his licence revoked because of it some years previously, forcing him to miss three and a half years of his career. And, of course, he was a convert to Islam and considered by many to be an agitator-in-chief who might spark a race war at any given moment.
So when Foreman kept Ali waiting in the ring for eight minutes before the fight that African morning, and Ali used the time to work the 60,000 crowd into a near-murderous froth, he was revelling in a public ardour that his homeland couldn’t offer. The famous rope-a-dope – Ali’s maverick, near-suicidal plan to let Foreman punch himself out – can be held up as one of the tactical masterstrokes of all time. But it was the public love, manufactured and manipulated as it was, that had laid the foundation for the victory. Watch When We Were Kings and check out Foreman’s expression as the movie progresses. It’s the face of a man who knows things aren’t going his way, and who equally knows he doesn’t have a clue how to change it. Ali, on the other hand, is master of all he surveys.
“Oh my God, he’s won the title back at 32!” fizzed Harry Carpenter, in a seminal piece of commentary entirely in keeping with the occasion. He certainly had, Harry. And how.
Desert Orchid: 1989 Cheltenham Gold Cup
Racing loves its heroes like no other sport. There’s an almost mythical quality to the relationship between race-goers and the magnificent equine stars that carry their hopes and dreams. No horse in history has embodied that more than Desert Orchid. ‘Dessie’ ticked all the boxes. He was a beautiful grey, a natural front runner, a breath-taking jumper of a fence and a trier with the heart of a lion. One of the greatest horses ever to draw breath to boot.
Dessie’s was a truly glittering career, including four victories in the King George VI Chase at Kempton Park. Kempton suited his free-wheeling, front-running style, being a relatively ‘flat track’. He also preferred right-handed courses, as he had a tendency to jump slightly that way, and most of his success came at such venues.
Cheltenham, a left-handed and undulating track, never suited him as well. So when Dessie arrived at the 1989 Gold Cup, the crowd may have been on his side but almost everything else was against him. As well as the characteristics of the course, the distance of 3 miles and 2 furlongs was considered by many experts to be beyond him (the King George was an ‘easy’ 3m and Dessie had been viewed as more of a two-miler earlier in his career). Moreover, the weather had deteriorated to such an extent that there was even talk of abandoning the meeting. Surely Dessie, a ‘good ground’ horse, wouldn’t handle the desperate conditions. Would he?
Around the final bend, Dessie found himself briefly in the lead. But scooting up his inside on the rail and travelling noticeably better was the mudlark Yahoo, who went on by over a length. Commentator Peter O’Sullevan said: “Desert Orchid looks as though he’s tiring in the ground, Yahoo who loves the mud is full of running at the second last.” And so it looked. However, Dessie would not go away. He accelerated again towards the final obstacle, jumped it and, as if blown up the Cheltenham hill by a rising wall of sound from the 58,000-strong crowd, gradually bested his rival to score by a length and a half. Readers of the Racing Post voted it the best race in history and few who were there would disagree. Furthermore, many would claim that the crowd, the very collective desire of the masses, spurred Dessie to that most famous of victories.
White vs Hendry: 2004 Masters
Wembley Arena is snooker’s biggest venue. It holds over 2,500, compared with around 900 at the Crucible. If you’re seated towards the back of the auditorium, it’s like gazing down a microscope at a tiny green stamp, similar to being an away fan at St James’s Park and having to watch the game from a quarter of a mile away. The crowd at the Masters (and it is a crowd rather than an audience) is large and loud.
Jimmy White has always enjoyed fantastic, fervent support here. In truth, he’s loved everywhere he plays but Wembley’s a bit special: London boy, London venue, incredibly partisan following. Never has this been more starkly illustrated than when he met Stephen Hendry in a second round match in 2004’s tournament.
Hendry might not have been the irresistible force of the 90s, when he was virtually unbeatable for long periods. Although still world number three, his star had begun to wane. Not as fast as White’s, though. Now in his 40s, his game seemed to be in terminal decline and he’d slipped out of the top 16, meaning he was only appearing at Wembley that year thanks to a wild card invitation by the event’s organisers. The bookies’ odds reflected their respective positions in the world game and White was available to back at 11/4 (I know because I took that price).
No matter. This was still a heavyweight clash and White owed Hendry. Hendry was White’s nemesis. Not only had the Scot beaten The Whirlwind in four World finals, he’d also come out on top in their six previous encounters at the Masters. On White’s home patch, if you please. It was an unseen affront not lost on the Wembley fans as they packed the arena that February afternoon. The customary vociferous support for White was coupled with genuine venom aimed at Hendry. He was booed as he walked on. Peopled coughed when he was on a shot. A phantom ‘farter’ let off on several occasions as he approached the table. All completely out of order, of course. But it didn’t half make it exciting. Most extraordinarily, a woman three rows in front of me tried to engage White in conversation. “I love you, Jimmy.” “Well, shut up, then!” “Jimmy, they’re not letting me talk to you no more.” White acknowledged afterwards that the crowd had crossed a line. He was embarrassed.
The match itself was a nervy affair. At 3-2 up, Hendry missed a pink for the frame that he later said he “could pot with my eyes shut”. What should’ve been 4-2 became 3-3 and White took advantage, surviving a number of bum-squeaky moments over the next hour to run out the 6-4 winner. He’d laid his Hendry Wembley hoo-doo. As this happy punter celebrated that night, it was impossible to avoid the thought that the will of the public had played its part.
