Victory of hopelessness over hope

I got this one by e-mail sent to me by someone very close. The moment I read it, I decided that it should be here.


I cried. After a long time... when South Africa won the match yesterday!!!

It was the victory of hope... ohh wait... did someone say, losing all hope is freedom. Well, thats exactly what won the match from the south africans yesterday night. So its the sweet revenge of hopelessness over the ever romantic hope.

Have you understood the phenomenal nature of yesterday's victory? No one has achieved anything of such enormity in the last few centuries. Just imagine, 6230 million souls (world population) thinking you cannot achieve it, and where are you--- at the top having just conquered it. Just imagine you are opening out there chasing the tall score - you have made 50 off 21 balls and smacked the ball around in the first 15 overs - and then take a look at the scoreboard and realise there is still 350 more to go. I would have been demoralised for sure.

Can one ever plan chasing down 434 - you must be a freak. Do you think SA's have actually charted out a plan when they went out to bat yesterday??? Ohhh can you imagine their coach saying, "see boys - take it ball by ball". Plans dont help, its the sheer dogged determination and an ability to raise your hand when everything is falling around you - that helps. Have we learnt something from this? To put it simply, Everything is possible!!! There was nothing to lose when you are chasing 434 - its all hopelessness all around. Does this ring some bells here - the concept of Nishkama karma??? The same old Bhagavadgeeta saying!!! Detachment from work - barring all expectations. A single thread of duty-consciousness was pervading through all the eleven souls yesteday night.

It was a wonderful day for me yesterday. I saw two faces of victory. First, was the movie Iqbal which speaks about the concept of DREAM and letting your dreams fly while you are chasing them - and catching up with them finally. The second one was a different case. You are dreaming, and a bugger comes along spoiling the precious dream, bottling up 434... So what do you do... you wake up. Chase the bugger to the wire. How spectacular!!!

You can call it a freaky incident - something going against the odds by chance. But is threre a possibliy of scripting 300 chances (50 overs)??? Ohhh imagine the probability of 300 balls falling in the correct urns when you throw them randomly. Purely out of academic interest, i tried to compute this bit and it turns out to be (1/325700000......00000....0000) - there are 615 zeroes in the denominator.