What Could Be More Important Than Cricket?!

I have always felt that a nation's mind lies in politics and its heart in its popular sport. Considering this analogy, cricket has always dominated the social scene in India and the players adored like family. Whenever a large populace is so passionate about a game, the players carry the weighty moral responsibility of living upto the expectations of these loyal but reactive enthusiasts. This year, the Indian cricket team bore the brunt of breaking the hearts of an entire nation with their recent ouster from the World Cup Finals. Having turned my back to the cricket scene after the 'match fixing' scandals, I was just starting to trust the game again and this loss was too much for my already compromised convictions about our team. So when I found a relatively unknown movie about cricket peeping from the shelves of a movie rental store, I was reluctant. Nonetheless, I don't know many Indians who could resist a film about cricket and I duly succumbed to those instincts.

Set in the 1960s, in London, 'Wondrous Oblivion' is a film that captures the rare friendship between the an eleven year old Jewish boy, David Wiseman and his new West Indian neighbours. The boy hails from a family of Jewish immigrants himself and upon watching a glorious cricket net being put up in his neighbour's yard, he is drawn towards their home, oblivious to the social issues brewing around him. His love for the sport takes precedence over the bigotry that is hounding his neighbourhood due to the arrival of this fun-loving and large-hearted Jamaican family in a largely white community.

As I watched, I realized that this film was not just about the sport, but more so about how man-made prejudice affects society. The sport was portrayed as the medium that induced the state of 'wondrous oblivion', which I believe has the power to prevent the ethnocentrism that marrs civilization. Moreover, this film was about the parallels in life. The little boy and his love for cricket were representative of the unbiased and indiscriminate acceptance that adults could learn from children.

Cricket is one sport where some of the great names in the history of the game belong to West Indies, South Africa and Asian countries and the Englishman can no longer claim dominance. This sport has on ocassion taken a noteworthy stand on racism and cases of apartheid (Reference: The Basil Lewis D'Oliveira case that resulted in the banning of South Africa from international cricket). Cricket has come along way since then and so has racial equality. 'Wondrous Oblivion' is a heart warming film that does justice to this indomitable spirit of the game and is worth a watch for not only cricket enthusiasts but for anybody who loves a wholesome and entertaining family film.

Having watched this film, while still peeved with the Indian team's performance in this year's World Cup, I learned a few important things from this story. I learned that as human beings we cannot be either entirely guilt-free or completely culpable. At the end of this movie, when the little boy misses his big game at school to lend support to his neighbours, his teammate asks him, "What could be more important than the Cricket Cup?". The eleven year old only smiles. There are things that are a lot more important than the actual sport that make up the integrity of any game. These things may seem idealistic and dismissable but ultimately, our personal victories are defined not by how high we hoist our trophies but by the lessons we learn from our losses.