This World Cup is Indian cricket’s coming-of-age moment

Between optimist and pessimist, the difference is droll

The optimist sees the doughnut, the pessimist sees the hole

When he wrote that, Oscar Wilde was riffing on the dilemma of Indian cricket fans and lapsed cricket journalists of a certain vintage—euphemism for “old”—who, having been burned too often, have grown to dread the heat and fire of ICC events.

Other teams wait for an implosion before they launch into lamentation; we, of said certain vintage, prefer to get our pessimism in early.

Take Pakistan, for instance. With a bowling attack led by the swing of Shaheen Shah Afridi and the …