Making sense of it would be like making sense of why we find a sunrise beautiful. Of course one could develop psychological or even physiological explanations, but the indifferent brilliance that it gives us is something that reason can only take away from.

The success of the Pakistani cricket team in the 2009 Twenty20 World Cup has caught us more as deer in headlights than rising to a predictable sunrise, though you could make an argument that their success makes such little sense that it makes complete sense. Still with me, everyone? Everyone from Mr. I-told-you-so to Is Inzamam-ul-Haq still the captain? Yes, you, us, Pakistanis all over the world brought together once again by eleven of our best when it comes to hitting a ball or throwing it at some sticks. It’s a beautiful thing you know, a community of 170 million suddenly gripped by something other than fear.

That fear threatened to make Pakistan pariahs of the cricketing world, one of the only worlds that provided us with a sense of belonging. I say this relatively of course, because when we were accused of not doing enough to provide security or doing too much on a ball, we weren’t doing ourselves any favours either.

However, in typical Pakistani fashion, “koi gal nai“.

The captain, while casually pointing out that they simply need to win and “the cup is ours”, is completely aware of the magnitude of what they can do, though he shouldn’t forget what they’ve done already. The pitch darkness that they found themselves in will give way tomorrow to a pitch that’s a few shades lighter, in the home of the sport that had forgotten their name: Pakistan. I suppose it’s a good thing then that we’ll be roaring it in unison tomorrow, from first ball to last, London to Lahore. As the 1992 World Cup brought us together to build our first cancer hospital, this World Cup has brought us together to build ourselves, and not a moment sooner could it have come.

Win or lose, tomorrow will be a beautiful day for Pakistan and I hope also for our deserving opponents, Sri Lanka. It will be a meeting of two countries whose people know all too well how insignificant the result of a cricket match is, but entirely aware of the power of sport.

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