Why cricket makes grown men cry

Death, they say, is the great leveller. There is no appeal when the great umpire in the sky gives you out. Life itself is a great leveller and sport, which encapsulates life, is also another in that category. Cricket is, perhaps, even more of a great equaliser in the way it can humble a performer in double-quick time, taking champions by the scruff of their neck and slamming them to the floor as it were.

How else do you explain the two results in the on-going India-Sri Lanka ODI series? One moment Team India was looking hunky-dory with critics seeming to take delight in there being no sign of early season blues. And the next it was being bowled out for very little with so many overs left unutilised and the opposition knocks off the runs in a jiffy just about losing a wicket. The contrast could not have been starker.

By its very nature, cricket is a moody beast allowing none any time to relax. The shorter the game the greater the chance of taking a tumble, which is what happened to the World Cup champions when facing the runners-up. That there is so little separating the top four sides in ODI cricket makes it clear that this is one branch in which nothing can be taken for granted. In a week in which the top rated Test side tumbled to its fifth defeat in nine Tests, cricket’s way of mocking at the greats is nearly like reading Dostoevsky.

In sport, as in life, the success stories are certainly more inspiring. They were seen in scenes of Hashim Amla easing the ball into the onside with those wrists of Indian origin even as India’s prince, Virat Kohli, kept driving it through covers with the silken touch of a right-handed David Gower. This was like watching a capsule of batting by the best who have ever wielded the willow in the game. Great current form tends to elevate batsmen to near invincibility at the crease.

It is also an immutable law of nature that all good things must come to an end, which is what happened to Kohli’s fantastic run that read – 133*, 108, 66, 183, 106 – before it was broken by his dismissal for just one, feathering a catch to the ‘keeper and pretending it never happened. That was a nice try to keep the streak going but it didn’t fool the umpire. The Sri Lankans would have struggled to stay on the field if the catch had not been acknowledged, so comprehensive was Kohli’s conquest of their bowling, from Hobart through Dhaka to Hambantota.

I know genius is the most overused word in sport. It would, however, have taken just that for Dhoni to choose to bowl in the second ODI after the experience of the first. Even if the pitch looked more like a fourth day wicket with a tinge of grass on it, no one in his right mind would choose to chase in a climate in which daylight works in your favour when batting first while the sun tires out the fielding side. India’s skipper could have chosen the second option only if he wanted to test his team. Even then, he would have faced a possible mutiny from his men and we know the mood is not that great in favour of the captain among the openers.

To have faced the humbling spectre of defeat would probably better serve the team in a long season although those not quite so nuanced to cricket’s cruel ironies were jumping about a whitewash and, consequently, an exalted No. 1 status for Team India. The cookie crumbles in funny ways in the game. Its vicissitudes can make grown men cry. The best policy then is to cash in when you can, which is what both Kohli and Amla did in their purple streak. But then they too must bow to the Kiplingesque twin imposters of success and failure.