Just A Whisper..

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whisper.

-- T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men.

When the inevitable was realized, with the fall of the tenth wicket on that fateful day, I stared at the screen for the longest time. And words didn't follow for quite some time after. It was dead quiet.

I recalled the turning point for Team India, the very moment Indian cricket lost its mojo. It was that game against the West Indies, where India were bowled out with a run left to win. Yuvraj Singh squatted with his cricket bat for support, and you saw doom on his face. And it has never been the same for our Boys in Blue since.

This year was supposed to be the Year of India. And the momentum was adequately built up. My first thought though, after this defeat, was that moment, where Yuvraj saw the long dark road ahead. And I wondered whether he saw a long dark road ahead for India as well.

It shakes me to the very core to believe that this could be the beginning of the end for this country. When their gods fall from the sky, who has the faith to go on? What is left to believe in?

I see his vision. The long dark road ahead...

Half the Indian team's experience is thrown out of the team. Violence breaks out... continues.. evolves over time into sectoral violence because people forget what they are angry about. The tourism industry gets punched in the stomach. Corporate India is unable to recover losses incurred because of advertising budgets gone haywire. Foregin investment trickles out of India, because once again, we are not good enough. US ties with India collapse with India refusing to back out of the gas pipeline deal. And Manmohan Singh stares silently, helplessly, at this chaotic state of affairs.

'This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whisper'

These words were printed on the Times of India's full page special report on what went wrong with Indian Cricket. There it was, in the smallest of fonts used on the entire page, barely a whipser...