Exhausted!

No... I'm not running tired. I've just exhausted all the praise that I could possibly have for the Indian cricket team! After all the speculation ('QOTD - Can India lift the World Cup? SMS Your answer to some-blessed-number-which-will-give-our-channel-tons-of-money'), strategising and whatnot, India is out of the Cricket World Cup 2007. (At this juncture, a fervent follower of cricket might point out that India CAN still get into the Super 8s if Bermuda beats Bangladesh. To which I reply, yes, just as pigs CAN fly to Mars and back in an our in their underwear!)
It's funny really. I've waited four years for this tourney. (Okay, three-and-a-half, maybe. It took a good six months for the shock of the previous WC final to wear off.) Initially, I thought that the worst thing about this WC was the fact that the timings wouldn't suit us Indian viewers. Now, however, that is the thing I've come to appreciate the most. Because I can avoid the whole thing much easier this way. There's this sad air that hangs over the tournament now. Think about it. Starting (and moving in ascending order of sadness) straight from Brett Lee's injury (which upset me a little), India getting belted by Bangladesh, Inzy's low profile retirement, India getting belted by Sri Lanka, Australia belting competition in all their matches and Bob Woolmer's death (which now increasingly looks like Bob Woolmer's murder). And adding to the really sad things are these annoyances. Like ads showing products being endorsed by cricketers (which are not all that bad usually, but can irritate me to no end when the cricketers in question play the way they did), Charu Sharma's wannabe Harsha Bhogle act, Mandira Bedi's... heck, everything about Mandira Bedi and SET's horrible tendency to chop off the telecast before the commentators finish their sentences and put in three ads per break.
That's the horrible thing about cricket. The Indian team is fairly good at it. (Before you stone me, rewind two weeks and read the papers.) They give us a hope and then drop our hopes down from a mile-high window. It's so much better to watch hockey, where either (a) The tournament is international, and India has no hope anyway, or (b) the tournament is an in-country league, and you can rest assured that an Indian team can win at least that way! Or football. Here, I can completely eliminate the tension to be suffered while supporting the national team, since I'm not entirely aware of the existence of one. Or, even better, tennis. You know that the furthest Sania is going is the second round in any given tournament. Also, out of the 20 or so people that stand a decent chance of winning any tournament, I support about 18. Or maybe I should just be like my sister and switch loyalties throughout the match in all sports, supporting whoever has the instantaneous upper hand.
As my blog entry probably suggests, this is the closest I've been to depression. And, my dad reminds me, it's all Indira Gandhi's fault. How, you ask? Well, she created Bangladesh!