Nothing lasts forever.

Not even half a year has passed since Hardik Pandya was ruthlessly booed at every IPL stadium throughout the country.

Pandya sneezed and the whole country cussed him. His cricket was ridiculed, his captaincy questioned and his character dragged through mud.

I love my sport and this country that puts its heroes on a pedestal. But I hate that we don’t know how to take care of our fallen heroes.

The same people who saw Hardik as India’s biggest villain are today cheering their lungs out for India’s greatest hero that destroyed Bangladesh with a no-look upper cut so cool it made jaws drop!

We are very fickle lovers of the game. We worship our players one day and tear them to shreds the next. We build them up only to watch them fall – and when they do, we make sure they feel it to their last cell.

But Pandya had one of the greatest redemption arcs to orchestrate. God knows how he must have composed himself through such devastating personal and professional agony to take India to the historic T20 World Cup victory.

‘This too shall pass’, was what King Solomon had inscribed on his ring to remind himself of the impermanence of life. ‘This too shall pass’, must be what Hardik Pandya would have been chanting to himself during the roughest patch of his life.

Nothing lasts forever. The good, bad and the ugly – all time passes indiscriminately, without bias.

I think we rightly compare this sport to religion in our country. Unable to accept grey characters we either demonize or divinize them and turn them back at will.

I’ve always known that money is a fickle friend but the Indian cricketing fraternity is in a league of its own!