WC 2011, The End, A fanatic's tale

I am a Pakistan and cricket fanatic and I feel like I am dead. I can't describe the feeling I am going through but the closest I felt like this was when I lost a closed one in their match against life. Some of you might now conclude I am sick, I maybe but I am in pain and it hurts so badly that I wish everything just ends now and at this exact moment. There are scars that a fanatic takes to grave, 96 quarter final loss, 99 final loss, 2003 early exit and yesterday are a few such scars that you know are for lifetime because the pain of their wounds when inflicted tells you exactly that. 

So we lost the much anticipated semi-final to India and it is even hard for me to put into words how difficult it is for me to write this sentence even though it has been almost 24 hours since it happened. I am now at my workplace but finding it literally impossible to do any work, the pain is unbearable so I hope writing something down might sooth some of it. 

The anticipation to the 30th March match pretty much started as soon as the India-Pakistan semi final was realized. I don't know how much would you agree to it but being a die-hard Pakistan and cricket fanatic, from that moment onwards the usual symptoms of a fanatic panic attack started to appear one by one. Some of the symptoms include loss of productivity at work, playing and replaying of cricket and national songs and videos, occasional mood swings, frequent dreams about winning and losing scenarios, the constant and consistent rise in the heartbeat, the growing feeling that time is losing speed so on and forth. A fanatic suffers from all these symptoms and trust me they grow rapidly as the D-Day approaches. In the recent years the symptoms are often accompanied by emotional/motivational tweets and facebook status updates often turning into a cross-border-tweet fire. The profile pictures change to your flag or favorite player or favorite game memory.

Then the day arrives when India and Pakistan have to meet in the ground. The buildup to the final countdown varies from fan to fan, the optimists spread positive thoughts, the pessimists fade into corners praying to deny their forbidden thoughts and come out when they are proved wrong. I was the later kind, though I had my share of tweet bursts 24 or so hours before the match had to start but the last 24 hours they were painful. It is a pain you have bore if you are a fanatic, you are not sure of what you want, you don't want the time to fly you don't want it to stop either, you don't want the match to be abandoned you don't want it to be played either, you want to kill your forbidden thoughts and you don't want to be too optimistic either, you want to motivate everybody and you want somebody to motivate you too. It is so complex and torturing that for me it completely takes away my will and desire or appetite for food, sleep, study, work, move pretty much anything. The last 12 hours before the match started I took my Pakistan shirt out and then sat in a chair and stared at a screen (with occasional twitter updates) and I did that for straight 12 hours. 

Then there is a brief patch between start of match transmission till players make it to the field that you breath a little easily. Perhaps because you have prepared enough over the past few days or perhaps you have surrendered to your positive or negative thoughts. In any case that patch is brief and the match starts soon. For this match, I watched the match outside Pakistan in a combined gathering of about 150 people with 3/4th Indians and 1/4th Pakistanis. The buildup was enormous, the moment you wear your country shirt you suddenly feel as you truly and deservedly represent it and have to take a stand for it, the goosebumps when somebody waves the flag in the crowd and the rush of blood when you see your heroes on the screen for the first time on that day its an intense mixture of adrenaline pumped joy and fear. The match started and I put up a flag next to the big screen and then roared in front of it facing a 3/4th opposition and it felt like I have just fulfilled the purpose of my existence. The match had its ups and downs which I don't want to think about right now, but the shouting and naray-baazi at every up and the shouting and naray-baazi in response to an "opposition's up" was tough to handle. 

Towards the end some of us left the hall with the 4th Pakistani wicket and mostly left with the 5th or 6th wicket, the later you leave defines how strongly you feel the urge to support your team no matter what and believe in them till the last ball, all of which differentiates a fan from a die hard fan and a die hard fan from a fanatic, I left with the last ball because I knew from Afridi's face in that last over that his words would be emotional and painful and in terms of both emotions and pain I was full, I was overloaded, I was drowned making me perhaps not the most superlative fanatics, because they shed their first tears with the skipper apologizing to the nation, they choked with their skipper's last WC smile, they trembled as the skipper walked away. The journey as the team leaves is not new to a fanatic the hours you sit alone in silence, of which the early ones are the easiest because the pain hasn't yet settled, the thoughts and replays haven't yet started, the tears have helped with some calming but if you have been there once you know of what's coming. A tsunami of pain, anger, frustration, grief and loss takes you in and smashes you across its unlimited waves. You don't want to blame anybody or anything, you just want to not think or remember what just happened and that just proves the hardest thing to do. I haven't logged into twitter or facebook since yesterday, I haven't checked cricinfo, I haven't checked the newspapers, I have avoided gatherings and people where I would be asked questions or made fun of for being such a girl that I cry over cricket matches but having done all that I understand that there is no shortcut to this long road to recovery. It will take its time and toll, it wouldn't be any less painful then its predecessors and I will have to walk through all of it and at the end of the road I will have two options either to quit being a fanatic or wear the green jersey that hangs at the entrance of the other path and says "I am prepared for the next encounter", and that my friend is a difficult choice yet it always seems easier to wear the green jersey then quitting. 

So I will suffer, I will bleed, I will suffocate, I will cry, I will lose hope, send me all the pain you can "semi-final" for I am sure that I will lick my wounds and get up sooner than later. I wore the green jersey yesterday and that I didn't do for no reason and that came with a responsibility that said no matter how difficult times will be or how painful the loses will be, I the proud wearer of this green shirt will survive through all the suffering the game has to send towards me yet I promise that I will rise again and I will roar again and I will have my share of joy and revenge because thats what my heroes have always done. They have risen to glories from the ashes of destruction and this association that I have with them I don't deserve it if I give up today or ever. There is no shortcut to this pain you are feeling but revenge, which we will have sooner than later but till we have it we keep our wounds sacred and fresh we protect them by scratching them when they start to heal, we bleed to know we bleed green. 

So Team Pakistan and Shahid Afridi we are grateful to you all for putting up a brave effort, no doubt you could have done better but that is not the question anymore, the question perhaps is that given your circumstances and resources would any other team in the world have produced such an effort and this question my dearest beloved team needs no answer. As a matter of fact we the fans apologize to you for making things so difficult for you but we promise we will do better. We apologize to you on behalf of Ijaz Butt, Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir, we apologize to you on behalf of Rehman Malik and every other person who created difficulties for you and we are proud you conquered them all. 

So in this difficult time we stand together so that we rise together, there is no shortcut but I will be at the other end of this dark tunnel and I will be bleeding yet I will be bleeding green and that is how it will always be. 

Team Pakistan you are my first love, I am a proud Pakistan and cricket fanatic and no loss can beat me ever.