Ranjona Banerji | When Argentina Isn’t 100% Love, Love, Love

It is possible that that is indeed my intention.

Let’s wait for the end to make that judgement, yes?

Now that I’ve alerted you to an upcoming catastrophe, should I stretch the tension out further or should I reveal all? What would be fair and what would be most effective and are not those two directions implacably opposed?

I think today is in an important day in the scheme of things. Oh wait, I am so uncaring and ignorant that I need a moment to go and ask a search engine. Back in a jiff. Okay, tomorrow July 20 is the important day. Or maybe that’s a time zone thing and it’s actually today, July 19. These search engines try to be annoyingly super helpful sometimes.

Have you got it yet?

It’s the beautiful game. And I just don’t get it. My brain cannot compute the system and my eyes cannot differentiate between people and actions. I see a lot of little stick figure men running up and down from one end of a field to another. O come on, I hear you screaming. Surely, the passes, the defences, the footwork, the head bangs, the finger of God, the falling on the ground screaming from a little push, surely some aspect of that excites and interests you? Well, I’ve been screamed at before. I still haven’t managed to get past my inadequacies. And only left people screaming even louder.

However, sometimes, although I know and understand nothing, I look up some stuff and then throw out facts to annoy fans. They are an easily irritated lot. Ask me, anyone says anything negative about Roger Federer and my brain explodes. So, I know the weak points enough to antagonise and annoy people. Usually, I do this to people who annoy me. It’s not a form of flirting, the way men use teasing. Or maybe it is. Who knows.

I hear you saying: this is just not possible. How can anyone not love the beautiful game. I’ll tell you a story then. I did try. The 1982 Football World Cup was the first one shown on Indian television, which was Doordarshan. It was famous for telecasting stuff from around the world. It was also famous for cutting away from a Wimbledon final at match point for the news. There was no internet in those times, so you can imagine the rage and frustration when Martina Navratilova and Chrissie Evert or Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe were frozen at mid-serve only for you to be told that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had visited a coal mine.

Enough distraction. Football was on television, hitherto only seen in passing at maidans in what were then known as Bombay and Calcutta. We did not play it in school. My father diligently explained everything that was going on and it was great fun. I remember to this day that semifinal between West Germany and France, the controversy over West German goalie Harald ‘Toni’ Schumacher bumping into French player Patrick Battison with no foul given, in spite of Battison’s huge injuries, the historic but infamous penalty shoot-out. And French captain Michel Platini’s grace in the face of defeat.

I cannot deny that it was very exciting. However, without my father’s presence at every football match, I subsequently understood nothing all over again and that was the end of that. Any subsequent holiday home, he seemed to have lost interest as well. Being reasonably wicked himself, the only other football story I can offer about him is when the great Brazilian player Pele visited Calcutta in 1977. The city’s streets were lined with football-mad people waiting to catch a glimpse of the superstar. My father drove past, stuck his head out of the window and shouted in Bengali: “Pele’s coming, Pele’s coming” waving vaguely behind him. The crowd yelled with great fervour and excitement in anticipation and by the time they realised that the arrival was not imminent, the trickster had sped away.

I suspect I may now lose my Bengali credentials, but I can sing Rabindrasangeet at a pinch so maybe I can redeem myself under interrogation.

If it’s any consolation, I feel almost the same way about cricket as I do about football although I do understand a lot more about the game and have watched it many times. Cricket, especially Test cricket, has a massive advantage over football. Since the progress of the game is slow, if you cannot fall asleep, you can put on Test cricket commentary and soon you’ll be snoring away. Football commentators and cricket commentators in other formats are very excitable, shout too much and people sing songs as well. Plus they use those vuvuzelas everywhere since 2010. Not conducive to a good night’s sleep.

I gather that for this World Cup, people are or were very excited about some players, like a Norwegian boy, I think. And even I could not miss all the controversies over rampant and unacceptable racism, bad refereeing, and timings, and the weirdness of holding this most popular international tournament in North America. Where one of the three host countries doesn’t even know the game is called “football”, because they have their own weird version.

Being an equal opportunities offender, I must make it clear that I would not watch women’s football either. The same problems of non-comprehension apply.

I feel I must at this stage appear gracious. I hope you enjoy whatever happens this weekend and even if your country and/or favourite team lost, which I assume it did for most of you. There are bound to be some controversies about both the teams and their players which will add extra zing to the play and possibly official goofs and googlies. Ya, that’s cricket. I know that much. But if you can use hattrick for Messi’s three goals, then I can use googly.

So, what do you think? Did I upset you enough or let you off the hook?

Who cares anyway.

I’ll be fast asleep when all the action happens and your hearts are broken and you crack open the champagne or down your haldi milk in rage.