Loss of Brazil to Croatia and Loss of India to Australia: The Why Behind The Similar Feeling of Loneliness

 Brazil lost to Croatia during the last Qatar World Cup Knock Out match after getting an edge over Croatia. In a similar way, India lost to Australia in the ICC Cricket World Cup on 19th November, 2023 after taking first three quick wickets while Australia was chasing India's score. 

The Qatar World Cup saw 31 best teams of the World out of the more than 200 football-playing nations which involves 250 million people of the World. ICC World Cup 2023 saw two best teams out of 10 qualifying teams within the 104 member countries of the World and 108 cricket teams. There are 4200 professional cricketers amongst 30 million registered cricket players of the World. The simple numbers show that Football is a more equal, libertarian, humanist sport  in comparison to cricket. The numbers also show that the degree of competition, rivalry, and passion is much greater for Football than for Cricket.

Then, ideally, if assuming hypothetically that my love for both the games and both the teams are equal (the teams being the Brazilian Football Team and the Indian Cricket Team), then from a sheer number or humanism or sports ethics perspective of egalitarianism, my sense of grief from the Brazilian Football Team loss should be higher than the loss of the Indian Cricket Team. 

The loss of Brazil kicked out my favorite football team from a competition that was fought in a more fair, egalitarian way in comparison to the Indian Cricket Team's loss from another knockout match of a Cricket World Cup. However, then to my surprise after Sunday, 19th November, 2023, I felt lonely in a similar way as I felt on 9th December of 2022. In this case, somewhere, the loneliness may be because in spite of my sense of patriotism for the country, I was more outsider to a kind of spirit that makes the sport reductionist in a knockout match while everything else surrounding a knockout match of a cricket world cup stands above the game or the sport itself. 

Yes, I stood up to sang the National Anthem (which I do for every Indian Match in any sports platform wherever India is performing) but after the match, I felt lonely but happy for the Indian Cricket Team which showed consistency, true sports art and craft. I felt the tears of Rohit in a similar way as I felt the tears of Neymar on 9th December, 2022. 

The last Sunday match definitely made me lonely but not lonelier. I realized it is a satisfactory feeling to be lonely with your thoughts of being an outsider to a spirit around a game which reduces the skill, art, and craft of the game in front of all other subsuming spirits of business, profit, brand, nation (not as a nation soul of Rishi Aurobindo but as a nation-state of Rishi Aurobindo), imageries, dreams, celebration, loudness. I realised actually by being an outsider to these spirits, I had become more of an insider now to the eternal core of the game itself. 

At that very moment of loneliness, I sensed a sheer epiphany of chill with a transcendence of my feelings of a void which were similar to Neymar and every Brazilian or anyone around the World on 9th December of 2022 who were and are equal insiders of the game. They are the insiders to the sports and its beauty of humanistic bonding threads beyond borders connecting sportsperson : the tears of every sports person who looses out in a knockout match even after their best submission, self dedication to the sports and the turf ground itself. 

I became lonely by being an insider but I realised how Neymar, Rohit were and are worshipped and remembered equally by many insiders like me who are patriots but also can understand the nation soul of Rishi Aurobindo. They are equal insiders to the game of sport by playing, worshipping, reading, researching and understanding it across and over the years.

Yes, therefore, I realized, being lonely and an insider to the sport and game, is never good or bad in its entirety. It is in this moment of realization, that I could sense the following. The understanding was that the loneliness of an insider to the game of Football or Cricket who gets to a conversation with their therapist - "Football" or "Cricket" is actually not pathologically a loner in the society or within the game. Rather, this loneliness is a cure to the ever widening outsider world of the game of "Football" or "Cricket". 

This battle between the Insider and Outsider will continue to stay for ever and hence I realized that it is never as good as it gets to be very good or as bad as it gets to be very bad while being or staying lonely. Indeed, such an insider existence can be healing even while feeling the tears of Neymar, Rohit at the same time!