Let me begin with a confession: I am not a cricket buff. Never was. Never pretended to be. I do not wake up at ungodly hours to watch men (or women) in white or blue chase a ball that, more often than not, refuses to move fast enough to justify the excitement.

If you ask me, my heart was always with football. I once bought a second-hand ball that needed restitching for Rs 2, collected from my friends. It's the beautiful game where passion beats show-off, where even a barefoot boy can become a star, where 90 minutes decide it all — and where no one has to spend five long days pretending to enjoy a slow-motion contest.

To my mind, cricket was a colonial offering India should have politely returned along with the last ship sailing out of the Bombay Harbour in 1948. A farewell gift need not always be accepted. Had cricket sailed away with the British, we might have saved generations of youngsters from pretending to understand obscure field placements and commentators from having to invent excitement where none existed.

My objection to cricket was simple and straightforward. A Test match lasted several days. Days! Life is short enough; yet here we have educated men watching others defend balls without the intention of scoring. Then there were the clothes — starched whites as if the laundry business itself sponsored the game. The bats, the balls, the pads — all things only the wealthy or schools run by the wealthy could afford. And why, I often wondered in my youth, should a nation of ordinary folk worship a sport that looked like leisure packaged as patriotism?

In contrast, football was honest. A match lasted 90 minutes, or 60 in those old school tournaments where halftime equalled a glass of lime juice and a pep talk. If there was a draw, you would replay the match or add extra time. No tea breaks, no lunch breaks, no rain delays, where the most exciting action was watching umpires stare at the sky.

Then something dramatic happened that changed me — and the nation. The limited-overs format arrived, and suddenly cricket began to run, not stroll. One-day matches made the game tolerable, and at times, even exciting. You could watch the start and the finish on the same calendar day. Television discovered a goldmine. Non-Commonwealth countries discovered a pastime. And India discovered that cricket could pay — and how.

Today, what Indian cricket may lack in humility, it compensates for in wealth. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), which ironically still pretends to be a sporting body and not a corporate entity, commands a budget larger than that of some Indian states. Stadiums are built like palaces, cricketers earn like CEOs, and fans behave like shareholders whose emotional dividends depend on sixes and wickets.

The Board's patriotism often manifests itself in peculiar ways — such as instructing players not to shake hands with Pakistani counterparts, even after "Operation Sindoor," while quietly calculating television revenues every time India plays Pakistan. If patriotism and profit weighed equally, perhaps no match should be permitted until normalcy returns. But financial patriotism has its own boundaries — and conveniently deep pockets.

For a long time, I never paid attention to women's cricket. Not because they lacked talent — but because India, collectively, believed sports were a man's business. Remember Chak De! India (Go, India!), that film where victorious women hockey players return to a city that barely recognises them? That scene where they struggle to find transport says more about our sporting priorities than any policy document.

But on October 31, 2025, I found myself moved — not by a film scene, but by a photograph splashed across newspapers. A young woman, Jemimah Rodrigues, crying tears not of defeat, but of triumph. She had steered India to an improbable victory in the ODI semifinal against Australia. As veteran journalist Amitabh Shrivastava wrote gleefully, this might well be India's greatest ODI victory — men included. He even chided those who still cling to worn-out idols when new heroes are right before us.

The match had begun with despair hanging like monsoon clouds over Mumbai. The Australians were cruising. India looked resigned. Then Rodrigues — determined, confident, fearless — turned the tide. She stood firm, batted with grace and grit, and lifted the nation on her slender shoulders.

When victory came, she cried. And then she did something rarer — she thanked Jesus first. She quoted Scripture (1 Samuel 12:16), proclaiming that she stood on the field, and God fought for her. A verse in the Book of Exodus 14:16 says the same. In an age where faith is sometimes reduced to hashtags and temple selfies, here was purity — conviction without theatrics, humility without apology. She thanked her team, praised her captain, Harmanpreet Kaur, and showed what leadership looks like — shared glory, not solitary boasting.

I mention Kaur deliberately — a proud Sikh leading India's women across formats. A daughter of Punjab demonstrating that religion does not define commitment to the tricolour. Faith is personal. Patriotism is collective. That is how it should be.

Ordinarily, I would never highlight the religion of any player. But in Rodrigues' case, silence would be an injustice. She faced a bizarre and vicious controversy when her honorary membership at Mumbai's Khar Gymkhana was suspended on the allegation that her father, Ivan Rodrigues, was using the club's facility for "conversion activities" — charges as baseless as they were bigoted.

In an India that prides itself on diversity, here was a reminder that prejudice often walks ahead of truth. Which is why Rodrigues' tears, her faith, her courage, and her victory matter even more. When a nation stands together, it becomes unstoppable. When it divides itself, it trips on its own shoelaces.

While Rodrigues was pounding the Australians with her bat, another performance was underway — not on green turf but on a political stage. Home Minister Amit Shah urged Bihar voters to vote in a manner that the "reverberations are felt in Italy." One wonders whether Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who recently completed three years in office, even knows where Bihar is on the map. Equally, I wonder how many Italian provinces our Home Minister can name without help. (Trivia lovers may attempt the quiz privately.)

Why Italy? Because Shah wanted to remind listeners of Sonia Gandhi's birth country, and by extension, cast aspersions on Rahul Gandhi's "Indianness." Never mind that Rahul Gandhi was born here, lives here, fights elections here, and loses elections here too — a uniquely Indian talent.

Decades ago, I met two Catholic priests in Raigarh, Madhya Pradesh, both in their eighties, and devoted to serving the people. After spending over fifty years in India, they were expelled on the charge of converting locals, though they had long severed any real ties with Italy. Forced to leave the place they called home, they eventually moved to Delhi, where they lived out their final days — and, in a final gesture of belonging, instructed that their bodies be cremated rather than buried.

Sonia Gandhi, it bears recalling, wears the sari with more grace than many born to it, and has observed Hindu customs since her marriage. Yet for her critics, her birthplace eclipses her decades of public service. The BJP even claims she governed the country for a decade. In our politics, selective memory is not just an affliction — it is an art form and a calculated strategy.

If foreign links are so problematic, perhaps we should revisit history. The Sangh Parivar's ideological roots have strands in European fascism. BS Moonje, mentor to MS Golwalkar, met Benito Mussolini in 1931, studied youth militarisation in Italy, and sought to replicate it in India. Golwalkar, in his 1939 book 'We or Our Nationhood Defined,' praised Nazi Germany's racial pride. Incidentally, the pistol used to kill Mahatma Gandhi was of Italian make.

Should we now demand genealogical purity tests? How many of us would pass the test? Not those who came from Central Asia and settled on the banks of the River Sindhu, and today claim to be the aborigines of India, describing the real aborigines as vanvasis (forest dwellers).

If so, the late Sushil Kumar Modi, the BJP's tallest leader in Bihar, whose wife was a South Indian Christian, would have failed such tests. Yet he was respected and considered a chief ministerial possibility. And rightly so — because identity never diminished his ability.

Varghese K. George, a senior journalist and editor with The Hindu, recently examined India's diaspora diplomacy in his column, "India's diaspora diplomacy and the limits of cultural nationalism abroad." In it, he offered a measured yet pointed critique of what I see as Shashi Tharoor's familiar argument — that Indians overseas should tirelessly champion India's interests.

Patriotism, George suggested, need not be performed with a loudspeaker on foreign soil; sometimes it is simply about being good global citizens and letting one's conduct speak for one's country. After all, not every Member of Parliament in London or Washington is waiting breathlessly for opinion briefs from Indians living in New Jersey or Melbourne.

Meanwhile, a section of our diaspora appears determined to prove its patriotism in ways that would make even the most overzealous flag-wavers back home blush. Some burst fireworks illegally in suburban American neighbourhoods during Diwali, as though the Statue of Liberty needs to be reminded of its cultural roots with smoke alarms and police complaints.

Others dutifully carry idols across oceans, only to immerse them in fragile lakes abroad — turning foreign park rangers into reluctant custodians of desi spirituality. To such highly motivated patriots, even pollution seems to transform into a sacred national duty, proving that while we may have left India physically, our more dubious habits sometimes travel on an H-1B visa too.

Once, near Chandigarh's Sukhna Lake, I saw a woman toss puja material into the water and flee before anyone could object — car engine running, as though committing a sacred heist. My protest was in vain. In my own church — the Mar Thoma Church — prayers are offered abroad for the leaders of that country: the King in London, the President in America, and the Sheikh in the UAE. That is what loyalty means — respecting the land you live in while loving the land you came from.

But here at home, some leaders still label competent officers by religion. A former Chief Election Commissioner was called a "Muslim CEC." As if competence came stamped by faith. In Uttar Pradesh, another leader encouraged "retaliatory conversions" through marriage — ten Muslim girls for every Hindu girl who dares to love across faith. No action was taken against him. Imagine what would have happened if he were a Muslim leader!

It was such divisions — caste, creed, ego — that allowed foreign powers to conquer us. We forget this lesson too often. And yet, every now and then, someone holds up a mirror, reminding us that we are greater when united than when divided. Delhi Metro alone believes that "nobody is greater than all of us." Of course, the slogan was coined long before non-biological beings began to rule the country.

Our heroes — real heroes — do not shout slogans. They perform. They inspire. Rodrigues, with her bat and her Bible verse. Harmanpreet Kaur, with her leadership and composure. SY Quraishi, who served as Chief Election Commissioner with dignity. These are the Indians who remind us what India can be — confident, diverse, inclusive, unstoppable. When they shine, the nation shines with them. And when we celebrate them without prejudice, we grow a little taller ourselves.

India does not need more walls. It needs more Rodrigueses, more Kaurs, more Quraishis, more citizens who believe that talent is not tied to religion and patriotism is not measured by birthplace.

I began as a football lover, dismissing cricket as a colonial relic. Today, watching Jemimah Rodrigues cry tears of joy, I realise that sport, at its best, is not about bats or balls — but about heart. The heart to believe. The heart to persevere. The heart to unite. If we could carry even a fraction of that spirit beyond the stadiums, into our politics, our homes, our society, then India would not merely win matches — India would win itself.