CRICKET: IT WAS hard not to get caught up in the fervour of excitement after a pulsating World Cup final. The shuffle from Wankhede Stadium as the fireworks blitzed the night sky, and the walk through the throngs on Marine Drive, "the Queen's Necklace" with its glittering lights, told it all. All the way back to the team's hotel, cars were bumper to bumper, horns blaring, Indian tricolours waving as youngsters hung precariously from their windows. Early night it was not.
So it came to pass, almost as precisely as planned when first the subcontinent was awarded the World Cup and Mumbai the final. In hindsight, as the day dawns over the Arabian Sea, it seems inconceivable that anyone but India should have taken the trophy. The astrologers were right with their predictions. Well, almost. There was a fairytale for the sainted Sachin Tendulkar, but not in personal performance for he was too readily undone by the ferocious maverick Lasith Malinga.
Tendulkar was carried shoulder-high around the ground in celebration by his young team-mates as though a symbol, draped in the Indian flag, of how he has carried the hopes of a nation for so long. He looked a happy, fulfilled man, his 100th international hundred now pencilled in for an English ground in the summer.
There was no grand finale for Muttiah Muralitharan, the old fellow creaking, held together with sticky tape it seemed, unable to recapture even a glimmer of the past to help carry his Sri Lanka side to a second World Cup win rather than a consecutive loss, unable even to finish his quota of overs and glad perhaps that it really was all over.
By the end, there was almost resignation as he was being pummelled mercilessly through the offside by the India captain, MS Dhoni, who rose to the occasion so brilliantly that as he clouted the seamer Nuwan Kulasekara high up to the corporate boxes at midwicket to finish the match he reached 91 from 79 balls.
This was in a match that had already been graced with an exquisite century from the Sri Lankan Mahela Jayawardene and a more practical 97 from the Indian left-hander Gautam Gambhir before impetuosity took hold with his own century there for the taking.
Now it is India who well and truly have the bragging rights. At periods during the competition, there were occasions when it did not seem sufficient for them simply to recognise that they had a stellar batting side and that this would always offset a modest fielding side and indifferent bowling beyond the brilliant Zaheer Khan and Harbhajan Singh. This was to misunderstand how momentum works in a competition, where the opportunity is always there to correct mistakes in personnel or strategy.
The fielding, led by Suresh Raina, Yuvraj Singh and Virat Kholi, was first rate, the bowling excellent. Zaheer finished the competition as leading wicket-taker and set the Sri Lankans back in the final with three consecutive maiden overs at the start of the innings, even if he was to suffer at its back end. But it was the all-round skills of Yuvraj, hitherto seen as a fill-in bowler, someone to come on and take the mickey out of Kevin Pietersen, which garnered the man-of-the-series award. It was in this context that Dhoni’s decision to come to the crease at the fall of the third wicket in place of the man deemed Victor Ludorum which proved a masterstroke. Yuvraj had enjoyed a good series with the bat as well as ball. But Dhoni recognised two things at the fall of Kohli’s wicket to Tillakaratne Dilshan’s stunning return catch.
First, it was important not to get two left-handers together, for the contrast of right and left will always serve to disrupt rhythm. But of more importance was the understanding that Sri Lanka’s spin options, which were seen as the key to the game, were off-spin only in Murali, Dilshan and the tall John Emburey-like youngster Suraj Randiv, brought in as replacement for the injured and much-missed Angelo Mathews.
Sri Lanka fiddled with their side, ditching the left-arm spinner Rangana Herath but more pertinently dropping Ajantha Mendis, the mystery bowler who – so it is said – has been worked out by Indian batsmen.
Dhoni was able to control the match, first playing largely second fiddle with Gambhir, in a century partnership, before Gambhir retreated to square leg, swung agriculturally and lost his middle stump. But he was stunning thereafter – with Yuvraj now – a man capable of hitting the boundary where others would be defending, such is the strength of his forearms.
All the while, as the game slipped away from them, Sri Lanka could mull on how Jayawardene’s remarkable innings had given them hope. If their captain, Kumar Sangakkara, said afterwards that they needed 350 to compete with such Indian batting, he was being flippant: they had their minds set on 250 which history told them should win a match batting first under the lights at Wankhede.
When Jaywardene walked from the field with an unbeaten 103 he had taken Sri Lanka beyond their expectations. At halfway, they might have believed the game was theirs to lose. Instead, India and Dhoni saw it as theirs to win.
GuardianService
SRI LANKA: Innings
U. Tharanga c Sehwag b Khan 2
T. Dilshan b Harbhajan Singh 33
K. Sangakkara c Dhoni b Yuvraj Singh 48
M. Jayawardene not out 103
T. Samaraweera lbw b Yuvraj Singh 21
C. Kapugedera c Raina b Khan 1
N. Kulasekara run out 32
T. Perera not out 22
Extras (b 1 lb 3 w 6 nb 2) 12
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Total(for six wickets; 50 overs) 274
Fall of wickets: 1-17, 2-60, 3-122, 4-179, 5-182, 6-248.
Did not bat:L. Malinga, S. Randiv, M. Muralitharan.
Bowling: Z. Khan 10-3-60-2 (1w), S Sreesanth 8-0-52-0 (2nb), M. Patel 9-0-41-0 (1w), Harbhajan Singh 10-0-50-1 (1w), Yuvraj Singh 10-0-49-2, S. Tendulkar 2-0-12-0 (3w), V. Kohli 1-0-6-0.
INDIA: Innings
V. Sehwag lbw b Malinga 0
S. Tendulkar c Sangakkara b Malinga 18
G. Gambhir b Perera 97
V. Kohli c and b Dilshan 35
MS Dhoni not out 91
Yuvraj Singh not out 21
Extras: (b-1, lb-6, w-8) 15
–––
Total: (for four wickets, 48.2 overs) 277
Fall of wickets: 1-0 2-31 3-114 4-223.
Did not bat: S. Raina, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, S. Sreesanth, M. Patel.
Bowling: Malinga 9-0-42-2 (2w), Kulasekara 8.2-0-64-0, Perera 9-0-55-1 (2w), Randiv 9-0-43-0, Dilshan 5-0-27-1 (1w), Muralitharan 8-0-39-0 (1w).
