Do we rest our hopes on the Infallible One or the fallible eleven?
23 March 2007 was a doomsday for Indian cricket. While the entire nation was praying for India's victory in the World Cup, our eleven fallible soldiers failed – failed to win, failed to live up to the nation's expectations, failed to make a mark, and failed to make us happy again.
Some lost faith in their heroes and some lost faith in God. But what is God supposed to do when people from sixteen nations are praying for their team's victory? What is God supposed to do when you forget His instruction " to worship Him without motivation and involve Him in match-fixing?
All of us strive for happiness but it is unfortunate that our happiness depends on the performance of eleven people I who themselves cannot predict , their performance for the day. Instead of banking on the sunlike Lord who knows the past, present, and future, we bank on fleeting shooting stars.
We need to seriously sit down, churn our brain and reconsider, "Is it worth wasting ten hours of a day watching cricket?" Especially when the sages cry out aloud that even a second's loss in human life cannot be recovered by paying millions of rupees. Perhaps, only a person on his deathbed realizes the importance of every second available and laments for the useless waste of time.
Before that final countdown begins, let us begin to read the glories of the infallible Lord, who never loses a match. Even when that unborn Lord is a newborn He kills Putana. He kills Aghasura at the age of five. He defeats Indra at the age of seven and Kamsa at the age of eight.
Lord Krsna is the real infallible; He never lets us down. If we make Him our hero, He assures us eternal happiness and freedom from birth, old age, disease, and death.
People say cricket is not a game; it's a religion , especially for us Indians. Actually the pleasures of cricket begin when we forget religion. If we follow actual religion we can derive immense pleasure. Dancing to the tunes of the holy names of the Lord during kirtana provides eternal happiness far beyond that achieved by dancing in the stadium when our hero hits a sixer. By dancing at the fall of wickets we are falling down deep into the dark well of material nescience.
To summa rize, if we choose to watch cricket in this world, we lose the chance to eternally play with Krsna. Then with this lost chance our life becomes barren just like a maiden over.
Yugavatara Dasa is an Associate Professor of Anatomy in KEM Hospital, Mumbai where he lives with his family.