Sometimes, when Irish eyes smile, they laugh. Never more so than when getting the better of the English. Spectators at the Chinnaswamy stadium went instinctively for the underdog, thanks to their opponents England, a team everybody else always loved to hate a padded up Douglas Jardine swatting flies in Australia, the legend goes, was rebuked: Dont drive them away, Jardine! They are your only friends here. Well, cricket between England and its former colonies was never just cricket. But those faultlines had begun bridging in the subcontinent. Ireland reignited the dying embers in Bangalore. This was the cricketing zenith of Englands first colony and poor cricketing cousin from the bat of a 26-year-old former electrician with currently pink hair who now has the World Cups fastest century ever.
Is that the eternal return of bad karma? It is. Is it an argument against the ICCs decision to cut the Cup down to 10 sides? It is. Is it the best thing that could have happened to a tournament derided as a snooze fest before it had even begun? It is. But post-colonial justifications apart, Ireland won on passion, grit, optimism and a little luck, starring Dubliner Kevin OBrien and partner Alex Cusack. Cricket jokes are sparse in the pantheon of all-time Irish jokes. After all, in the independent, republican part of the Emerald Isle, cricket wasnt a cult. In the Catholic parts of Ulster, the non-Gaelic English sport was forbidden. Yet, what was shunned on nationalist grounds has now brought this great national triumph which will be pardoned for acquiring old nationalistic tones.
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