The larger picture

 THE LARGER PICTURE: 

When you look at sports in India, a larger picture emerges. 

In the last Asian Games in Jakarta, our men's hockey team was in prime form. In the semifinals we met Malaysia and we froze. The lower ranked Malaysians beat us and the gold medal slipped. 

In the commonwealth games, our hockey team had played some good hockey, both in the games, and the preceding FIH ProLeague. We had had the measure of the likes of the Belgians. 

The hockey fans hoped, but not only did we lose in the finals to Australia, we were trounced 0-7. The players of the quality of Harmanpreet Singh & Manpreet Singh just did not turn up. 

In the Asian Games, just a few months back, our badminton team was up against China. It was a historic gold medal team match. Lakshya Sen won. Satwik-Chirag won. Kidambi Srikanth was leading 1-0. One more game & a historic gold medal in team event of badminton would be ours. But Srikanth froze, lost the match & the Chinese won the next two matches to beat us 3-2. 

We had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. 

Our women's hockey team came into semifinals as favourites against China. The Chinese applied pressure. They were aggressive & we splintered. The Chinese trounced us 4-0 & went on to win the gold medal. 

In the hockey world cup earlier this year, we came up against New Zealand whom we had beaten twice in the FIH ProLeague quite comfortably. It was the round of 16. We froze, and the match went into penalties, and Harmanpreet Singh, the best dragflicker in the world, missed a penalty. The 5th ranked team in the world, playing at home, finished 9th in a world cup that India was hosting. After the world cup, the same team beat Germany & Australia. 

Now let's turn to cricket, specifically the ODI world cup. 

2015 we were beaten by Australia in the semifinals. The team was led by MS Dhoni. 

2019 we were beaten by New Zealand in the semifinals. The team was led by Virat Kohli. 

Yesterday we were beaten quite comfortably by the Australians in the finals. The team was led by Rohit Sharma. 

We came into the finals having played inspired cricket. We were the favourites. 

We all hoped & the team froze & played poorly. The Aussies stuffed us. 

There have been so many occasions of our players & athletes freezing at the big moment, and losing their nerve when it mattered the most, that it can fill a book. 

Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Harmanpreet Singh, Kidambi Srikanth, Savita Punia are some of our players from varied sports who are individually very good. But comes the big moment & they flounder. Add to it the name of PV Sindhu, world championship winner & twice Olympic medallist. She freezes at the sight of Carolina Marin of Spain. 

A rare exception to this pattern is Neeraj Chopra. The bigger the stage, the higher he soars. But he is perhaps the only one. 

Simply speaking we win when no one is expecting us to win. Very few people were following the Asian Games in August when athletes like Harmilan Bains, Parul Chowdhary, Annu Yadav, Kishore Jena & Jatinder Toor came from nowhere, and won. No one expected them to win. 

But the moment you start expecting, we flounder. Ask Nikhat Zareen, twice world championship winner, who was expected to win gold, but ultimately won bronze in the Asian Games. 

I believe our players lose because of fear psychosis. The fear of failure, combined with the burgeoning expectations from billions, and the repeated failure at the big stage, whether cricket or hockey, haunts us. Countries like New Zealand, Australia, Japan, South Korea & China either don't have that psychosis, or through repeated successes in various sports at the highest level, have overcome it. And maybe they don't have the screaming fans breathing down their neck. 

It will perhaps take a couple of more generations to overcome this fear psychosis. Maybe longer. 

Till then, let's enjoy the journey, and be happy with whatever success in sports comes our way.