Just a few days ago, I was glowing with joy. After five grueling days, eight hours a day of rollercoaster cricket, India had somehow managed to draw the Test match against England. Yes, draw. And I was thrilled. Because on Day 4, it looked like England was going to hand us a good beating.
This entire month, my morning routine has been to wake up, not before dreaming a few times about checking scores and finding an Indian batting order collapse, and then half awake, telling myself that dreams don't matter, and sleeping some more to wash away that dreadful dream, only to get another one. To break this cycle, and to finally face the realities of the responsibility of earning bread by working on a much less thrilling job than a cricket field, I would wake up, and then actually check the score. Get ready, and in the bathroom, refresh ESPNCricinfo every half a second, and then head to work, and keep thinking about the score while half-listening to a student update me on their week's research progress.
Today I woke up to find that India had beaten England. By 6 runs! The day before, I was fantasizing about Siraj’s hat-trick. It didn’t happen. But we won, and as every cricket fan says after a near-cardiac experience: “It’s the result that matters, not my blood pressure.”
Now, two days ago. Saturday morning, I was up early again. I just wanted to watch India’s second innings. My family, noticing I was awake wondered if I was worried about something that I am not revealing to them. Nope. No therapy needed. Just cricket. Just Test cricket, the world’s most agonizingly slow, beautifully painful form of emotional self-harm.
I told them later: it’s just the game. And they nodded, clearly not understanding a thing.
