India's captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, center, walks back with teammates after winning in the Cricket World Cup final match between Sri Lanka and India in Mumbai, India, Saturday, April 2, 2011. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)
In sport, as in life, we are sometimes offered the chance to atone for past failings. As the Cricket World Cup final wound to its end, a small group of India’s champions were able to take that opportunity. Sri Lanka’s own legends have no choice but to wait, or embrace their nation’s Buddhist doctrine of surrendering desire.
The World Cup final of 2003 was India’s most wretched day on a cricket field. It started with a 24-year-old fast bowler named Zaheer Khan, waiting at the top of his mark to attack one-day cricket’s pre-eminent destroyer, Adam Gilchrist.
Zaheer’s first delivery was a no-ball. One ball later, the same again. Then two runs and a single. Five leg-side wides. A boundary. Another wide. The match’s first over took ten deliveries to complete, and gifted 15 runs.
The initiative had been surrendered. Gilchrist smacked 57 off 48, as Australia lost just two wickets in piling up 359.
Zaheer’s seven overs that day went for 67 runs – nearly ten an over. Sachin Tendulkar’s modest spin had to be drafted in to make up the younger man’s allotment.
Elsewhere in the hurricane, veteran seamer Javagal Srinath went for 87 from ten. It was the great paceman’s last match for India after years of toil, and a less fitting send-off can scarcely be imagined.
At the innings break, Tendulkar exhorted his dressing room that the impossible could be done. If they could strike one boundary each over, he said, 200 runs would be accounted for. The rest could be accumulated. He knew how rare this chance was, and he was determined that it shouldn’t be surrendered.
But if that fired any belief in the Indian dressing room, it was soon over. Tendulkar swatted the requisite boundary in his old nemesis Glenn McGrath’s first over, then top-edged a pull next ball.
The talisman was gone for those four runs, and while Virender Sehwag gave glimpses of what he would become with a run-a-ball 82, India subsided in less than forty overs for 234.
Now, it is 2011. Two days ago, India faced a World Cup final again. Five of the players from 2003’s humiliation were on the ground; a sixth, injured in the semi-final, watched on.
Again, before the first ball was bowled, was the pressure. Expectation, fear, the eerie lull before hostilities commence. Again, it was Zaheer Khan to decide who would blink first.
His first delivery was on the spot. And his second. And his third. Backed up by superb ground fielding, India’s spearhead bowled not one but three maiden overs, an ODI feat as rare as steak tartare.
Choked of chances to score, Upul Tharanga saw out 20 deliveries before edging to slip. A man who had scored 393 runs in eight innings this tournament was gone for two. Zaheer’s first spell read five overs, three maidens, one wicket for six.
Again, the tone had been set. While Sri Lanka went on to post a solid 274, India were not going to take a backward step. And as their run chase went on into the Mumbai night, they duly refused to do so.
Zaheer was not the only one with redemption on his mind. There was Yuvraj Singh, whose dismal IPL showings had seen him bagged mercilessly as fat, useless, and full of himself by the brutal Indian media.
What a time to come good with a Man of the Tournament performance – a century and four fifties at 90.5, and equal third on the wickets list with 15 to his name.
There was MS Dhoni, reminded on an hourly basis that his best World Cup score was 34. On the most important day of his Cup career, the captain duly delivered, striking the winning runs to cap off an aggressive, unbeaten 91.
The most important turnaround, though, was team-wide. Two balls into the chase, India’s great destroyer in Sehwag was gone for a duck. Then, as in 2003, Tendulkar couldn’t impose himself after a superb tournament, edging behind for 18.
This time, though, India’s hopes did not depart along with him. This is the new breed of India, with the attitude Dhoni has instilled in his side.
Players like Virat Kohli, Gautam Gambhir, the captain himself, have no fear. Sehwag never did. Harbhajan is the kind of scrapper you’d want at your back in a dockside knife-fight. Zaheer has put away youthful fragility.
Gambhir is an opener so unheralded he wasn’t even allowed to open. But when the bigger stars failed, he was the man who delivered. Dhoni promoted himself because of his IPL experience keeping wicket to Murali. When Gambhir fell he took over. Never for a moment did you sense a wavering of India’s belief.
Of course, belief alone is never enough. Spare more than a thought for Kumar Sangakkara’s side, who for the past two years or more have been the epitome of confidence and control.
Through all that time, they’ve known they were aiming for a World Cup final. They too believed they could win it. Perhaps their last-minute personnel changes unsettled the team. It’s a question we can’t answer.
For all of that, Sangakkara has been the consummate leader through those years and this campaign, with all the qualities of ingenuity, determination, and statesmanship that one could wish for.
Sri Lanka’s opening pair has been a powerhouse, with a staggering 895 runs between them in the tournament. They should provide a basis for years to come.
Watching Murali play through his injuries to take bags of wickets on one leg exemplified everything we know about his character – big-hearted, enthused, and the ultimate team player.
His script-writer delivered in Colombo, but for once failed to show up in Mumbai. That said, Murali at least has one winner’s medal in his collection. Tendulkar had played six World Cups without one. It would be a hard heart that would begrudge him one now.
Then there’s Mahela Jayawardene, who scored one of the greatest World Cup hundreds in setting up Sri Lanka’s total. ‘Effortless’ is the truly appropriate word, for an innings as stylish as Audrey Hepburn and as cultured as Swiss yoghourt.
88 deliveries without a slog or a false stroke, and the man in the bandana cruised to 103 not out – an MTV strike rate with MSO technique.
In this new era of batsmanship, the likes of Kevin O’Brien and Yusuf Pathan go after bowlers with the all the finesse of Beowulf tearing off Grendel’s arm. If theirs is the broadsword, Jayawardene’s is the scalpel. If they are grindhouse cinema, he is a gallery of fine arts.
The masterwork was in vain, though – even the Great Library of Alexandria was susceptible to fire. Sri Lanka has now lost the past two World Cup finals. India waited eight years for its shot at redemption. Their neighbours have their work cut out to get that same opportunity in 2015.
Three finals in a row is no cakewalk. Their champion of champion bowlers, unquestionably the nation’s finest, is gone. Lasith Malinga has also retired – two hat-tricks in just 80 ODI innings tells its own tale of how devastating he could be.
As for Jayawardene and Sangakkara, players who history will come to place in the very top tier of the game’s practitioners, they will play on. But who can say if they will still be there in 2015.
Both are 33 years old. Both are subject to sporting mortality. In celebrating those who find redemption, let us not forget the ones who never have the chance. Such opportunities don’t come around that often.
Just ask Javagal Srinath.
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