Sunday 29 March 2015

Sportsman spirit

The inherent basic rule common to every sport is that there will be a winner and a loser. As a sportsman myself, I think what matters more is how you play. You can play poorly and win and you can play excellent and still lose. Some may think it is necessary to win in order to determine your worth but in reality, I feel, what matters more is how you play than whether you win or lose. And to give your best effort and accept defeat in a good spirit is what sportsman spirit is all about. In the recent Cricket World Cup 2015, India performed brilliantly throughout the entire tournament making all the Indians bask with pride. They made it to the semi-finals and unfortunately lost to Australia by a few runs. Needless to say that they put in their best effort and tried as much as they could. The Australians performed exceptionally well and they won. 
It is only natural for the country to feel crestfallen and sad about the defeat considering the fact that India had won the previous World Cup and naturally the Indian supporters were looking forward to two wins in a row. However, being unhappy or unsatisfied with the performance is something and spitefully putting the blame on irrelevant things criticizing your own players is another thing. The Indian team made the entire city proud when they won the previous World Cup and for all the matches they won this year. It is not fair to blame them and accuse them and criticize not only them but their girlfriends who did not even have anything to do with the match is highly unethical, unfair and absolutely against the spirit of sports. It is okay if someone says that the team did not play its best or these are the things they perhaps should not have done or something which one directs to the game itself. But to see such a huge population fill the social media with accusations and mockery about a single player and and his girlfriend is just unfortunate. 
Perhaps it reflects that a huge chunk of the Indian population is prone to living in an illusion, closing the truth out and putting the entire blame on something absolutely irrelevant. India played well but Australia played better and hence they won. This is about all that can be said about the match but it is fascinating to see how the people can overlook this simple fact and put the blame on so many other absolutely unimportant things. Perhaps this is a problem with all the major issues in India. People like to overlook the real truth and blame the problem on something unimportant and just pretend they do not see beyond that. Perhaps this is why people blame the victim is a rape case instead of changing the mindset, blame a lady instead of just accepting defeat, blame the poor for not working hard and being poor instead of helping them or maybe donating a part of their savings to charity. Perhaps the problem is not being able to embrace reality and escaping into a self-built illusion. Perhaps..