I have worked throughout weekend to capture every moment of this interesting India Vs Australia contest. I never anticipated Australia will be in a precarious must win position because of their defeat in the hands of Afghanistan. I looked up the radar in Gros Islet, St. Lucia and there is no rain clouds over the island and I expect the full match to happen. Australians perform their best when their back is against the wall and India never lost even one match so far. But India won straight 9 games in ODI World Cup before they lost the final against Australia. India has not won an ICC tournament since 2011 World Cup and they are longing to hold the World Cup for a while especially after achieving coveted status of #1 team based on rankings in T20. England, the defending champions have done so well in this tournament even though it appeared that they would be eliminated in the initial round due to rain. I feel the semi final teams are going to be India, Australia, South Africa and England. South Africa has alway choked when they get to the business end so is India. I feel the final will be between Australia Vs England.
Interesting development after Afghanistan defeated Bangladesh in a rain-affected pitch to storm into the semi-finals. Jonathan Trott working closely with Rashid Khan made this extraordinary effort possible. They have been dreaming big for the past few years and only Brian Lara predicted that Afghanistan will be in the semifinals. Now Wednesday, we have South Africa Vs Afghanistan and Thursday we have India Vs England. It is unfortunate that only one of India or England can go to the finals. South Africa is also enjoying the status of undefeated team like India. However, this status means nothing unless both teams perform well in the semi-final to reach final. If we recall, India was undefeated for 9 consecutive matches in 2023 in ODI World Cup only to be defeated by Australia in the final breaking the hearts of 1 billion+ people. Besides, the team strength, game strategy, wind direction, rain, winning the toss, day time match vs night time match, etc. play a prominent role for each team. While Wednesday semifinals is a night match, Thursday match is a day game. I am hoping there will be no further rain in semi-finals and final matches. Let the best team carry the world cup.
What a remarkable victory for the Indian team in the final of the World Cup T20. I lost hopes when South Africans were to score only 30 runs in 30 balls. It is an easy target at that stage for South Africans. For India to come back from that to win the World Cup is unbelievable. 16th over - Bumrah bowls a tight over giving away just 4 runs. 17th over - Hardik bowls an excellent first ball making Klassen to touch a ball giving a catch to Rishab Pant. He also gave just 4 runs in this over. 18th over - Bumrah got Jansen out in his 4th delivery and gave away just 2 runs in this over. 19th over - Arshdeep bowled brilliantly in his 19th over giving away just 4 runs 20th over - Hardik comes back to bowl the last over. In his first ball, he gets Miller to hit high and what a brilliant catch by Surya Kumar Yadav at the boundary line throwing the ball inside and coming back to take it under such a pressure. Again in his 5th ball, he gets Rabada out giving a catch again to SKY. This final will be talked about for a fairly long time because how India came back after almost losing the match. Besides this is the final T20 Kohli has played and he announced his retirement from T20. He played a brilliant innings holding up one side to score 76 runs. Akshar Patel played another brilliant innings coming in after losing 3 wickets. Rohit Sharma after battling in so many ICC tournament, finally got one silver in his repotary. I believe Gautha Gambhir, a new prospective Indian coach has already decided to move on with a new set of players bringing in young talents into T20 and I don't believe we will see either Rohit Sharma nor Virat Kohli playing T20 in future. Hardik will be the captain and all new talents such as Abhisek Sharma, Nitish Reddy, Rinku Singh, Sai Sudharsan and others will get a chance. India has already prepared a B team to visit Zimbabwe to test waters. India has so much of talented players and I am sure they would do well in future as well.
Yester night in india at 11pm I switched off TV when SA karlsen hit a six and next 4 overs he/they would easily score 20 odd runs and would become world champions. I went sad to bed and had profound sleep. Morning at 6 am I opened the last but one page of The Hindu and reading the headlines and detail notes my joy knew no bounds. I switched on the tv and watched highlights. I was quite delighted jumping with joy as if I was at Barbados oval stadium when sura kumar took that catch off Miller jumping in and out of the boundary ropes . Super o super thanks to super leadership and great responsible batting by virat and splendid economy by bowlers in 18 to 20 overs. What a fluctuating fortune and the nail biting finish. All spectacular. I presume @viswa was in the stadium in oval Barbados.
Dear Thyagarajan Sir, No I wasn't in Barbados and watched it peacefully at home. My mother in law gave hopes too after 15th over when Klassen and Miller were playing unbeaten with 30 runs to score in 30 balls. I was watching it on my phone despite my mother-in-law's shutting down TV. When it was 8 runs to score in the last ball of Hardik, I went and told her that India was about to win. She didn't believe my words but started watching it again the last ball and all the celebrations afterwards. Because Rohit and Virat were to announce their retirement, perhaps, they were blessed to win the cup in the last 5 overs thanks to Jaspreet Bumrah, Arshdeep Singh, and Hardik Pandya.
