The Blue Tigers were playing a familiar foe on Tuesday at Salt Lake Stadium, Kolkata, and not in the sense that they had played 28 times previously with India winning 15 of them. The familiarity seeped much deeper than the statistics. It was the frustration and the hopelessness that football fans had experienced for years, owing to the criminal favouritism towards cricket showed on both sides of the border.

The campaign was systematically placed one year before India started their 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifiers and if not that campaign alone, Chhetri pleading to the fans, to come to Mumbai and watch India’s Intercontinental Cup match last year, had done the trick. People had turned in numbers to watch it and while the excitement had faded away soon after, the turn-up was a massive victory for all sports non-cricket.

YBK had been filled before – when Ze Roberto starred for a Bayern Munich side against Mohun Bagan back in 2008 for Oliver Kahn’s farewell game, or when Lionel Messi had come with Argentina to play a FIFA International friendly match against Venezuela there. 

But, Tuesday was different. The salubrious crowd at YBK, smelt not only of sweat but also sacrifice, for the match, scheduled right in the middle of the festive period in the country, didn’t see people rushing in to watch superstars inconsiderate about the result, which has been the case earlier. This fandom reeked of India’s biggest football hope - seeing them getting a step closer to the FIFA World Cup. 

Even a handball fan would have known two aspects about this match – firstly, Bangladesh walked into the YBK hoping for a draw at best, and secondly, India were expected to see way more of the ball and create more chances throughout the 90 minutes. And despite knowing everything about their opponents, India faltered and terribly.

Choker is defined in the urban dictionary as “a person or team that suffers a nervous collapse caused by the pressure of winning.” The Indian team, on Wednesday, had many such personalities on the pitch. And while Igor Stimac refused to blame individuals for the loss, we won’t. India had managed to create 97 attacks to threaten the Bangladesh defence, 55 of which were threatening, in a match that saw India winning 18 free-kicks and 13 corners. Hence, Bangladesh played exactly how one expected them to.

No one knew exactly why Anas Edathodika had announced his retirement and furthermore why he decided to come out of it. If AIFF went ahead and pleaded him to do so, we’re doomed. If one has to explain the performance of the Kerala centre-half without expletives, it would be “thoroughly error-prone”.  Now, if the coach, who has been consistently naming him in national camps one tournament after the other, doesn’t get to see it, should he be really keeping his job? It doesn’t get restricted to Anas though, as he was ably partnered by Rahul Bheke on the right.

Visibly unfit for the match, the Bengaluru FC full-back had conceded a penalty in the very first minute of the match. Had the referee not been lenient, the vibrant crowd would have been silenced then and there. The full-back, who was widely believed to be wronged by former head coach Stephen Constantine for not being called-up to the team, didn’t compensate for it in any way, missing easy scoring chances and giving the ball away in a move that could have easily led to a second goal for the visitors.

The internet was filled with Gurpreet Singh Sandhu interviews days before the Bangladesh match for the custodian had made as many as 11 saves in India’s heroic draw against Qatar, becoming an overnight star. But then again, underdogs often pull off big upsets because they always come to a competition with zero expectations and nothing to lose; a star, on the other hand, has to perform with the weight of the country on his shoulders. 

And when Sandhu was asked to evolve from a dog to wolf, he chose to become a squirrel instead. His goalkeeping howler was not only unacceptable but punishable, and the second time he did that, fans had given their hopes up.

But, we know why he was selected. A human can change everything in himself but nature. And Igor Stimac, who was a sloth-like defender during his Croatia days, couldn’t think beyond how he has perceived football throughout his entire life – a defensive game. The heavens themselves had opened up and signalled Stimac that he needed to play attacking football. Apart from Jhingan, Pronay Halder was injured and Rowlin Borges was suspended, which meant India had little option but to play on the offensive.

However, all of that failed at the face of Stimac’s resolute will as he instructed Anirudh Thapa and Sahal Abdul Samad to play as holding midfielders, thereby cutting the chord of creativity through the middle altogether. Chettri, for all the Lionel Messi-esque stature he enjoys in the country, cannot shift to a number 10 at will – even Wayne Rooney couldn’t. 

India’s chances of qualifying for the next World Cup stage have plummeted massively after just one point in two home games, but what was far more disheartening for Indian football was the brand of football that was on show when the whole world finally decided to turn up and give them a chance. “We failed to capitalize on our chance,” read Chhetri’s tweet after the match, and that statement applies to more than just their displays on the field.

By extension, this failure would affect the massive ambit of non-cricketing sports as well which have seen little morsels of investments coming their way over the last few years. And while Indian sport have seen better heroes off the Indian football field in the likes of Sindhu, Vinesh Phogat, Bajrang Punia, Sushil Kumar, Pankaj Advani, and many others, in a way, this 1-1 draw has echoes of the age-old Indian perception that India wouldn’t ever be a world power in any other sport after Cricket.

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