Salar Sayed doesn't want to talk. "I am heartbroken right now," says the Kabul-born ticketing agent sitting behind his Lajpat Nagar desk in south Delhi. It's the noon after Afghanistan lost to Australia in the World Cup, and Afghan expatriates like him are still in mourning. They are agonising over the dropped catches, the lbw decision that DRS overturned, the slivers of luck that didn't come their way. With the Aussies tottering at 91/7 and another 200 to get, the improbable was ready to happen till a preternatural Glenn Maxwell turned batting into a video game. Sometimes success is like water running through the fingers: you can only touch it but not grasp it.
The anguish is understandable. The gut-wrenching loss aside, Afghanistan is the story and the hero of the 2023 World Cup. Captain Hashmatullah Shahidi's men scalped England, setting the defending champion on a slide like never before. They swept aside 1996 winner Sri Lanka. And they spanked Pakistan for the first time in ODIs. The triumph sparked street dancing in the quake-wounded nation. With Pakistan forcing out lakhs of Afghan refugees recently, the celebrations were political too. "Beating Pakistan was our World Cup," says Sayed.
