What if we lose this match?

This is no longer a cricket match. Both sides have invested so much that a defeat of either side is unimaginable.

It’s here. The day the poet sang about, the day the Book promised millennia ago. Today is the day of judgement.

What if we lose this match? I’ll get to that in a minute, but first please consider the stakes. We’re not looking for just cricket today. Today, we want to see the vengeance of our ancestors unleashed in that stadium in Mohali. Today is the day we tally it all up. Five thousand years of history has gone into making this day so let the winner take all.

Who’s buying the whole ‘let’s win this cup together’ business? I understand some sentimental souls have taken vows to cheer for the winning team in the final, irrespective of who the winner in today’s game is. I’m touched with this sentimentality, I really am. But I’ll wait to see who wins today before making any decisions about the final.

But what if we lose? What if our worst fears parade around the ground today? I’ll get to that in a minute, but first please consider the situation. This is no longer a cricket match. This a smackdown for the history books, something akin to the Rumble in the Jungle legend of Muhammad Ali. Both sides have invested so much of their national and individual pride, prestige, honour and every other primitive impulse to have survived our evolutionary journey, that a defeat of either side is unimaginable. Herman Kahn thought he was tough for “thinking the unthinkable” about how to fight and win a nuclear war, but he had no idea how big that potato really gets. Today we’ll find out.

But what if we lose? Well, in that case there’s not much left to do but wrap the whole thing up, turn the clock back to zero, wipe the slate clean and prepare to start over again. No I’m not talking about the team or restructuring the Pakistan Cricket Board, or anything quite so mundane. I mean we should just bulldoze the entire country into the ocean and go back to being single cell organisms all over again. This whole complex organism thing cannot be considered to be working out for us, in the event of defeat today.

We can then debate the merits of walking on our hind legs all over again. Is it really all that it’s cut out to be? We could even consider just staying in the ocean. Or some of us could decide to keep our tails, they’re mighty useful when swinging in the trees.

So that’s the plan folks. Put it all on the line for today. Everything. Today, we yell every time the ball is in the air, we shout at every boundary, we scream ourselves headless with every wicket. Today, it all comes together. Today is the day your parents brought you into the world for, some may even say today is the day the earth was created for. It’s judgement day, and don’t you dare think you’ll walk away from it with your sanity intact.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 30^th, 2011.