India through to the finals

What a feeling it is. To be in the world cup finals beating Pakistan for the 5th time in the world cup. Its just difficult to digest. Goosebumps in the  tummy. Butterflies flew all around, screaming and abusing was a bit low key thanks to being in the foren country.

The tension to see in the finals after 8 long years and this time go one step further to lift the cup of glory in homeland was unpalpable. All superstitions were followed. Unmoved at times when things went right for India and when runs were leaked, when wickets didnt fall. Reeling Munna and Bhajji when they leaked runs. Blowing off Kamran Akamal when he showed his stupid poker face on screen during keeping and batting was all done.

Facebooking and watching cricket has been the trend this world cup. Update the status message on FB, update stats on FB, update number crunching there and put on some superstitions like Cmonnnnnnnnnnnnnn and to see a wicket tumble moments after that was all fun. Dont have the luxury to watch on TV on any channel, so have to rely on  the ISP and host of live streaming sites to watch the action LIVE.

It all happened on a day remarkable for Indian cricket, what a day it has been. Reaching 3rd world cup final, 2nd in 8 years and almost with the same group as it was in 2003.  Sachin, Sehwag, Yuvraj, Zaheer, Harbhajan, Nehra are the survivors of that match India lost in Wanderers to rampaging Ponting and co. This time its a step to go further. Win the world cup in Mumbai, the hometown of Sachin Tendulkar, country’s greatest sports icon and perhaps the best ever batsmen to play cricket in all times.

Thanks to Pakistan to turn up in India despite the hot and cold diplomatic relations, thanks to them for making the match living all the hype it had before this game even began. Thanks for them to provide us yet another opportunity to savior this victory. Beating Australia, Pakistan in the route to finals is amazing. The contests with this 2 countries have always been intense, thrilling and top quality. And Pakistan did go out in a proud fashion, forget what Misbah did in final overs, they have done their nation proud with almost flawless and mostly controversy less performance in the world cup. None expected them to come this far given what happened in past year in their build up to the world cup, so Afridi must be a proud man given how his men have delivered.

Sachin Tendulkar has played all 5 victorious games against Pakistan in World cups and he has been man of the match in 3 of them. He has scored 54, 31, 45, 98 and 85 in this 5 games. He has played with great Kapil Dev to Azhar to Jadeja, Mongia, Venkatesh Prasad and the great trio of Dravid, Ganguly and Kumble. Not to forget Javagal Srinath.

India won its first semi final at home. Previously it had lost its 2 semi finals, both chasing in 1987 to England and pretty controversially in 1996 to SL. This time India defended a 260 and won. 

The biggest turning point of the game was the dismissal of Gambhir in the 20th over which led to a mini-collapse in the 25th – 30 th over and a score of 350 became 260. Sehwag in his super assault on Umar Gul had set India on another huge total, but once he was out and the rest just went in the shell. Gambhir has been erractic this tournament. he has thrown away his wicket in almost every game. Something not expected from man of his stature.

Tendulkar was cratchy, scratchy and whatever, but his 85 set India to cross 250 and that proved to be the difference in the end.  MSD is excelling in captaincy, but his batting is concern.

What was too heartening to see was only 5 bowlers were used and everybody took 2 wkts each. Zahee was little bit off color, but he was made up by super Nehra and surprisingly Munaf.  Ashvin;s dropping was a debatable issue, but I still feel he will be a key man in the final and he should replace Munaf in the XI. Nehra got his rythm back in the 2nd spell and at helped him in the super final spell when he just gave few and got Riaz.

It was a day when the bowling and fielding excelled yet again and the batting was iffy.

In the end Younis and Misbah combined together to stall the stanis chase and its likely that this guys wont be part of the LoI set up in the future.  Misbah is test captain, but then who knows what happen in Pak cricket. The others — Shafiq, Hafeez and UKumal didnt quite turnup to play long innings that could have won their team this game. Yet they came this far and thats applaudable.

For a change there was no sledging this time and there was no “war cry” on the ground at least.  Expecting Pak to react to this loss graciously back their home and not call for the people’s head who featured in this tournament. They’ve got some very good positives in form of Riaz, Shafiq etc and once they are given chances they could come up as well finished product.

But for now lets savior the superb Indian victory and rally behind them to trounce the cheats of the world to avenge the painful defeats of 2007 and 1996. Lets burn the Lanka this time in Mumbai 8 months before the Dusshera festival.