The last month has been about the World Cup and Wimbledon and it all ended with an ultimate showdown on Sunday. But now that it’s over, how long will we continue to dissect the two greatest games of our time? What do we do with our evenings?

The Chennai water crisis has been a wake-up call for many Indians. Those of us who lived somewhere comfortably between “sab chalta hai” and “jugaad” are now a seriously conflicted lot, worried about the future of the planet. If this spurs us into action, eco-anxiety might not be such a bad thing.

Anyone who’s seen When Harry Met Sally as many times as I have will tell you this: its genius evolves and matures as you (hopefully) do. Maybe, when you realise you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you really do want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. But men and women can be friends. The sex part doesn’t always get in the way. Does it? Oh, who the hell knows.

Even after the most heartbreaking of defeats, Kane Williamson’s New Zealand and Roger Federer came across as winners. In a rare sporting moment, the second runners-up were celebrated more than the men who lifted the trophy. It made us realise that sport can exist without a loser.

It’s 2019 and yet in some of the year’s biggest scripts, actresses continued to play second fiddle. Save for Gully Boy’s Safeena, most of them were devoid of a personality. In one of the highest grossers of the year, Kabir Singh, Preeti exists only to get exploited, and in Kesari, we still don’t know if Parineeti Chopra is a ghost or a memory.

To decide the winner of a cricket match on the basis of how the runs were scored, is to overlook the fundamental objective of the game – it is about scoring runs, not hitting more boundaries. If the two sides are level on runs, like England and New Zealand were on Sunday, clearing the fence more times than the other does not make one team better.

The most natural reaction to losing the World Cup on a technicality would have been of excessive outrage. And no one could have held it against New Zealand captain Kane Williamson were he to be taken over by anguish. It stung deep, but not even an imminent heartbreak was enough for Williamson to get carried away.

The slower ball, once a gimmicky duplicate of spin, has now emerged as a newly conceived weapon of choice. Delightfully unnatural and unpredictable, the slow ball has bamboozled more batsmen in this World Cup than perhaps all the others combined.

In her speech after winning the Emmys for Big Little Lies, Reese Witherspoon spoke of how important it was to “bring women to the front of their own stories and make them the heroes of their own stories.” Eighteen years ago, that’s exactly what she did in Legally Blonde. Witherspoon’s Elle Woods embodied the unspoken rules of sisterhood.

For my best friend, who lost his mother recently, the World Cup became an antidote. With every Team India victory, I believed that its only purpose was to make my friend feel again. But when the team crashed out, we sensed an ending. It reminded us that the pain of losing a loved one is real – nobody could, and should, take it away.