India Wins World Cup again!

Hoo Haa India!

Ayaa India!!

India has won the First Twenty20 World Cup beating Pakistan in the final! What a sentence that was!!! It was a dream come true for all those cricket crazy people who did not have the luck to see Kapil raise the World Cup and was dying to see this happen. Azaharuddin with the all time best team could not get to it; Sachin the God could not do it; Dravid the wall could not touch it; Sourav the great came close, but failed to bring it home. It was Mahendra Singh Dhoni and a ‘stream’ of young blood that made this dream, come true. Many of the players were in their adolescence, some in their mothers’ lap and some were not even born when India won the World Cup in 1983, for the first time beating the mighty West Indies. This time, it was the dark horses and the arch rivals, Pakistan who tasted the bitterness of losing in the finals against a side lacking experience – everything else was in place! It is a remarkable achievement for the Indian side – not a fluke by any angle you see it. They not only beat Pakistan twice in the tournament but also have made the likes of Australia, England and host nation South Africa bite the dust, losing only to New Zealand by a small margin in the run to the Cup. At last, after all the turmoil that went through Indian Cricket for the last couple of years when Sourav lost his captaincy to Rahul; when Greg Chappell tossed the team along with the hearts of the countrymen and lastly the humiliating exit from the World Cup earlier this year; here is something we can be proud of – not only for now but, may be for a long time now!

The final match at the Wanderers Cricket Ground, Johannesburg was so full of excitement that people from almost all over the world watched the same. The King from Bollywood, Shah Rukh Khan could not resist himself but go there to encourage the team members and make them feel that every Indian was with them. He was so blissful to see the boys raising the World Cup that he went in the ground to personally hug them and congratulate them on the breathtaking win. Pakistan played gallantly till the last over and the last wicket they had, but fell prey to the young duo of Joginder and Shreeshant to bowled and caught respectively to show the flag-bearer of Pakistan, Misbah-Ul-Haq the way to pavilion and the Pakistani team the door out of the tournament. No one expected India to win the World Cup – no body even fancy a berth in the Semi Finals for them, but they came out with roars and growls and showed the potential of a team effort. India will take a lot from this tournament – a lot of experiences, a lot of joy, a lot of team spirit and certainly a lot of fresh legs to take the Indian flag further more. People will not think for a second that the three big guns were not present; they may forget the three half centuries from Gautam Gambhir; people may not remember the wickets that Rudra Pratap Singh, Shreeshant, Irfan and Harbhajan took; they may overlook the incomparable catch that Dinesh Karthik took of Graeme Smith; people can even stop thinking about the six sixes that Yuvaraj Singh hit in six consecutive balls from Stuart Broad; but one thing none of the Indians and most of the World will remember is that India has won the World Cup – the first ever Twenty20 World Cup.

Bravo India. Chuk De India!