AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

        Long after this World Cup is dumped into the recycle  bin of history. Long after the bitter news of Bob Woolmer’s death becomes a distant memory. Long after the annihilation of the minnows is overwhelmed by other happenings.

        What will remain of this World Cup in the recesses of rememberings? Yuvraj Singh’s towering sixers that were hit with the certainty of an opposition walkout in Parliament? Herschelle Gibbs’ sequence of stunners that has altered the record books? The Irish Botha’s bowling figures that would have made a miser shrink in inferiority complex? Well, all this will certainly be important bookmarks on the pages of this World Cup.

        But the album of memory would doubtless will be affixed with that unalloyed show of happiness, that inimitable dance of delight on the face of Dwayne Leverock after he miraculously snaffled India’s Robin Uthappa.

        The catch itself was quite dramatic given Leverock’s Obelix-like girth and his trampoline-bounce belly. That he could throw himself like an enthusiastic colt to pull off that catch was indeed memorable. But what followed was pure theatre, which no director could have wrenched out from any of his actors. Leverock, like a primordial bird unshackled of its fetters, just let himself free and took wings with a blithe spirit. He ran around like a bewildered deer and then changed direction in a capricious second and began to blow kisses to those in the stands like some innocent prima donna. It was fun because it was spontaneous and innocent. It was enjoyable because it was infectious and real.

        Moments like this make an event like World Cup. Even those who forget Tendulkar’s smashing six of Shoaib Akhtar at Johannesburg, will have no problem in remembering Ashish Nehra’s arms-stretched flighty flow, like a buoyant falcon, wicket after wicket (for six times) at Durban against England in the 2003 World Cup.

        In football, our mind still replays with happy goosebumps the impromptu lambada of sorts around the corner pole at the 1990 World Cup or Careca’s mental cradling act of an imaginary baby after every goal in the 1994 edition of the World Cup.

        Closer home, the most defining image of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi’s partnership is the adrenaline pumping chest-butt that conveyed their intensity and fed off thousands in the stands and elsewhere. It was from their heart, as it were.

        It is in these fleeting moments of fun and fervour, in those emotion-filled seconds, that men and women show up what sport is all about — a play, of everything that is natural and unrehearsed in life. It is the theatre of reality.

        Thanks Leverock for making us remember that.