this glorious game
this meeting of passions
a harbinger of hopes
an equaliser of nations
O glorious sport you!

5 billion people...that is 5,000,000,000 people, are watching this game as the best of them play for the big prize. if the sheer number is mindblowing, it does not begin to describe the magnitude of passion fueling it. for all of us in the subcontinent we could vouch for another sport in a similar vein, but cricket is played in only a few nations and is as passionate in fewer. And that remains true of most sports, particularly team sports.

yet football or soccer or fussball runs it own course. how many things on this planet have the power to stop wars and civil wars. to provide hope and happiness in spaces and times where sport and pleasure do not find, some would say deserve, the time of the day.

speaking for myself i love it without having to think why. but if i do have to, many coloured thoughts run around in my head. it is as if it reduces to a microcosm events from our collective histories, events that fired the hopes and imaginations of nations and people. let me give it a shot here;

for senegal playing and beating the defending champions...david beating goliath

for ghana playing and beating the czech republic...charge of the light brigade

for baggio shooting his penalty over in the '94 final...the fall of achilles

for pope being red carded in the US-Italy game...Indira Gandhi signing away 90,000 prisoners of war won in blood, for nothing, with a single stroke of her pen

for 1o men trinidad and tobago holding france to a goalless draw...horatio holding the bridge against the etruscan hordes

in its barest essence it removes birth and opportunity out of the men who play it. reduces the complexity of men to the fundamental purity of a child's joys. reduces it to how fast you run and how beautifully you dance with the ball.

O beautiful game you!