Poor Ishan Kishan, he had to fight off Messi, Ronaldo, Pele and FIFA World Cup

This last Saturday, Ishan Kishan got on the rooftop of a Bangladesh cricket stadium and shouted for attention. Sadly, he still wasn’t heard. The world was way too busy watching football.
Ishan played the knock of his life, but he couldn’t have chosen a worse day for it. At Chattogram on December 10, he got his first three-digit ODI score. It was a double hundred. Just 24, he hit 210 off 169 balls with 10 sixes.
The inning had an Alex Hales tempo, the kind that had knocked India’s T20 campaign out of the World Cup last month. Finally, here was a new-age left-handed opener India could invest in. But the buzz didn’t last long.

.@ishankishan51 scored a breathtaking Double Ton & was our Top Performer from the first innings of the third #BANvIND ODI 🔥 🔥
A summary of his stunning batting display 🔽 #TeamIndia pic.twitter.com/FJVryOnN1J
— BCCI (@BCCI) December 10, 2022
Ishan did trend for a while, there were even inside-page newspaper profiles of the potential star, but he didn’t make it to the front page or get featured in opinion columns. TV discussions too didn’t have outraged speakers wagging their fingers, and stamping their fs on the desk, asking for change.

India was in the middle of its four-yearly sabbatical from cricket. The India-Bangladesh bilateral series coincided with the FIFA World Cup. The time of the day when Ishan was unplugged too wasn’t ideal.
When Ishan walked onto the field, close to noon on Saturday, the world was just about waking up after yet another late magical tryst with Lionel Messi. The Argentina-Netherlands game had ended when the milkman was doing his rounds. Sleep was too mild an anaesthesia to wipe out that Messi laparoscopic pass – innovative, non-invasive and precise.

On emotions of joining the legendary @sachin_rt, @virendersehwag & @ImRo45 to @imVkohli’s advice 👏👌
Double Ton-up & man of the moment – @ishankishan51 – discusses it all with @ShubmanGill 👍👍- @RajalArora
Full interview 🎥 🔽 #TeamIndia | #BANvINDhttps://t.co/LjyjCzgOsb pic.twitter.com/vJ8oURO4MC
— BCCI (@BCCI) December 11, 2022
After being the usual Messi on the pitch, to the utter surprise of the world, he would transform into Diego Maradona off it. He would insult the highly-respected Dutch coach Louis van Gaal and shoo away goal-scorer Wout Weghorst, calling him a bobo – Spanish for fool.
There was so much to type on WhatsApp groups, so much to share around the office water-cooler. It was a game with several layers of intrigue, stories within stories. It was a football game scripted Ved Vyas. Protagons with a past, a complex battle of philosophies, giant-sized egos, ethical questions – it was arguably the most talked-about quarter-final of the World Cup.
This was the jam-packed mind-space that Ishan had to pierce into. His was a hory-making innings, it was bold and beautiful, but he was competing with Messi for attention. Till evening that day, there were murmurs about Ishan’s double hundred. They too were short-lived.

At 8.30 pm, Morocco took the field. Their goals and ambitions were way bigger than even football.
They were about to march on a path that no nation from their continent had ever headed onto. They were playing for Africa, the Arab world and all those undermined in a sport overwhelmingly dictated Europe. It was to be a watershed game with gravitas, a football match for the centuries. Morocco had a lot to prove, rewrite hory, change perceptions.

Hory books say that the origin of football can be traced to England, but other colonising nations in that region claim credit for spreading the game. But such is the simplicity of the game, so naturally it comes to human physiology and psyche, that it can’t be owned or appropriated any one country.
Game of the world
The act of kicking a circular object is a primal behaviour of homo sapiens. It could be a coconut on the beach, a stuffed sock on the street or stones in a jungle clearing. The definition of football is so fluid, localised and organic. Football belongs to everyone and the proud Moroccans in red and green were underlining that fact. midnight, Morocco with precision zigzag passes, scratched off the football hierarchy that was, till then, etched in stone. They found a place in the minds of the world.

🎵 , 🎵 #FIFAWorldCup #Qatar2022 pic.twitter.com/BaXbftU129
— FIFA World Cup (@FIFAWorldCup) December 16, 2022
The global television reach of the one and only truly mass sport has over the years ensured that football skills of players go a long way in deciding the quintessential identity of nations. All Germans are seen as efficient, Brazilians magically exotic, Dutch organised and graceful, Argentines the likeable rogues, English the perennial moaners, and now Moroccans were gritty, resilient, scientific and indomitable. It was scientifically unproven but a globally-accepted generalisation.
There was another tragic thread to this heart-warming story. After Portugal’s defeat, Criano Ronaldo, the superhero reduced to a super sub at Qatar 2022, was seen in tears in the tunnel. Football had asserted that it still remains a team sport. A team of gifted stars doesn’t guarantee success.

The much-maligned FIFA too should get credit for the game’s unparalleled popularity. They resed the basketball temptation to cut the game into quarters, and avoided cricket’s foolishness to let a diet version flourish. Both innovations could have given them more money, but football was too sure of itself to change.
With the core of the game remaining the same for centuries and goal posts not drastically changed, this simple sport has flourished without the constraints of geographical borders. That’s why the World Cup attracts footballers of all kinds. With close to 200 nations as FIFA members, football World Cups generate unparalleled buzz that goes beyond the sports pages and their stars have the most-recognised faces in the world.

Brothers always 🫶#FIFAWorldCup | #Qatar2022 pic.twitter.com/VAmLT0Ix4N
— FIFA World Cup (@FIFAWorldCup) December 16, 2022
Qatar 2022 started with FIFA president Gianni Infantino launching a clash-of-civilisation tirade reminding the world about Europe’s less-talked-about hory. “We should be apologising for the next 3,000 years before starting to give moral lessons to people,” he said. The bloody past of Spain and France in Morocco were themes for pre-match stories. World War references, the acrimonious Yugoslavia disintegration, the Palestine conflict – World Cups invariably fray nerves, open old wounds and dominate news cycles.
Such is the pull of the sport that footballing icons have horically been global celebrities with the rich and powerful among their fans. Once, the Shah of Iran waited for three hours so that he could have a photograph taken with Pele. This other time, Red China’s frontier guards left their posts and went to Hong Kong to watch the Brazilian great.

On that Saturday, when Messi marched on and Ronaldo walked away settling football’s contemporary GOAT debate for good, there was news that football’s original superstar Pele had a health scare.
Poor boy Ishan Kishan, this was a December when nothing could have taken the spotlight away from the World Cup and football. For the first time in ages, even Santa Claus might be feeling abandoned. Chrmas is a week away and the wait is for Messi to lift the Cup. Not for the old man with the flowing beard and sack of gifts on his one-horse open sleigh. Subscriber Only StoriesPremiumPremiumPremiumPremium
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