Chak De India

Last night India won the first Twenty20 world cup. They beat arch-rival Pakistan in the final, in a close game that went down to the last over. It would have been really cool to be in Mumbai to watch the game and see the crowds in the street, but we were in a very small city in Goa called Mapusa. In Mapusa the celebration was limited to some fireworks and the occasional band of drunken yahoos driving scooters around town with a big Indian flag.

This was the first time that India won a major international competition in something like 30 years, so I would imagine that it must be great to finally taste success in a sport people love so much.

Side story. The title of this post is from the movie Chak De India, which I believe means "Lets Go India". It is the top movie in India right now, and stars Indian mega star Shah Rukh Khan. It is about an India team of underdogs winning a field hockey tournament. The thing is that CNN-India stole the name of the movie for its coverage of the win last night. Watching the coverage was pretty funny, because, similar to how the Boston stations cover the super bowl wins, they basically have a 3 hour fluff program of various talking heads, including the king Shah Rukh Khan himself, talking about how great the game was. You realize that these programs are pretty boring to those who are not that into the team in question.

Another funny thing is that they were announcing on the show all of the money that was already given to the players from the chief ministers of the states where they live. I guess that is normal here, but can you imagine, if the Patriots win the super bowl, Deval Patrick just handing over 10 grand to Tom Brady. I don't think we would think of that as an appropriate use of government funds.