Team India

Sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand words.

The Script of Fate

"I walked five hundred miles and I will walk five hundred more, just to be the man who walks a thousand miles and falls down at your door."

Sachin Tendulkar, too, has walked a thousand or perhaps a million miles before coming to Mumbai for this game. The most enviable story in the history of independent India started years ago in the background of India's maiden world cup win when a 10 year old schoolboy of Shardashram Vidyamandir thought that he should play for India one day. He had to wait for six more years to realize his dream and what happened after that is the most frequently recited folklore in world cricket.

In the six years, however, a tender-aged Sachin would travel from Bandra to Shivaji Park to practice cricket. The tiny boy would occasionally go to the MIG club and the Azad Maidan to play matches. He would have to travel hard across Mumbai just as any other common man in the city. He would love to eat the Vada Paav so much so that whenever Sachin scored a hundred, his friend Vinod Kambli would gift him one. He was, and most likely still is, a huge fan of sea food, particularly the Bombay Duck - a type of fish endemic to the city of Mumbai. Although Tendulkar started touring the world with team India at the tender age of sixteen, his connection to the city of Mumbai is undeniable. This is where he grew up. His food habits, his first lesson of cricket, his school, his coach, his family and friends, his house, his childhood, his faint memories of being a nobody all converge at the city of Mumbai.

It may be a play of fate, a diligently scripted classic, that has put the great Sachin Tendulkar before his home crowd, in his home city, to win the only glory in world cricket that has eluded him not once but five times. The story is similar to a warrior's who, after conquering the whole world, comes back home to fight the last battle of his life. Sachin Tendulkar's 100th hundred today might be the greatest subscript ever written. Truth is stranger than fiction and this could be the best chance for fate to take its powerplay and play the best it could.

You do not win the cup for an individual and win it for the team, and Sachin Tendulkar, by every stretch of imagination, is a player deserving to be a part of a world cup winning squad. Would it be the perfect climax to the greatest tale cricket has ever told the world, or will it be a morbid anti-climax that will reside painfully in the minds of many? About nine more hours separate us from finding the answer to this conundrum and we shall all be eagerly waiting for it to turn out our way.

Whatever happens today will not make me rate Sachin Tendulkar any lesser than what I do now. He is the only thing on the planet that has constantly challenged my atheism. After all, he is the greatest there was, there is, and there will ever be.

Whose Cup Is It Anyway?

This is the closest I have seen India to a world cup. Just to remind you, I started watching cricket in 1996, and although India has played a world cup final after that, only a play of fate or the magic of Sachin could have had them beat the mighty Aussies then. Both, as we know, did not work and India remained a deserving runner-up. Today, the 2nd of April, 2011 can be the greatest day in Indian cricket along with 25th June, 1983. Yes, this will be the first of the three finals that India have played where they will start as favourites. The excitement was never greater.

Although Sri Lanka are a competitive team in the subcontinent and it is very difficult to choose between the two teams, I think India will have a slight advantage. This advantage is much thinner than the one they had over Pakistan and perhaps just a little thinner than the one they enjoyed over Australia. Strange as it may sound, when it comes to rating Asutralia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka independently, I might put the Lankans right down the list. Maybe because I personally dislike their game or maybe because that is how things are. But when it comes to playing against India, as of today, I think Sri Lanka would have the best chance of winning against India among those three.

India and Sri Lanka are structurally so dissimilar that it is hard to accept that they are so closely matched when one considers the overall strength of both the teams. Indian batting, as we all have seen, is by far better than its Sri Lankan counterpart. On the spin-friendly pitch that Wankhede is going to produce, Sri Lanka will enjoy a great advantage over India when it comes to bowling. Murali, even a 50% fit Murali, can be more lethal than any other bowler in the world on such a track. As I had said in a few posts even before the start of the tournament, spin will always play a vital role in the subcontinent no matter how much we talk about the batting-friendly new-age tracks. We have seen it happen right through the tournament and we will see it again today. Yes, both the teams play spin well and blah blah! but didn't we have the epic India-Pakistan game turning a bit?

One more thing about Wankhede is that the team batting first will enjoy a great advantage tomorrow. Primarily because it is going to be a low, turning track and secondarily because chasing can be mentally tough considering the grandeur of the match and the pressure it inflicts on the players.

India are here after struggles and memorable victories in the toughest of the battles that the tournament could have them fight. They have taken the road full of thorns to reach the final. They peaked at the right time after a decent yet partly shaky group stage performance and beat the 12-year world champions and their arch-rivals in two consecutive knockout games. On the other hand, Sri Lanka have walked on a bed of roses to reach the grand stage. They have beaten New Zealand twice and have thrashed England in the quarter-final. Both their knockout games were no more than a mere cakewalk at home. Hence, whoever wins, I believe, India deserve the cup better.

5 out of 6 of my knockout predictions have been precise, the only bad one being that of the third quarter-final. Today, as has been with India's games previously as well, it is a very close call. I won't be surprised if it turns out to be a nail-biter. Yet, I predict a 60:40 to India before the game starts.

With a whirlpool of excitement bustling in my mind, I have come to a point where all the analysis resigns itself. All that matters now after the one and a half months of spectacular journey is at the most 100 overs. 100 overs will decide who lifts the cup in the city of dreams. For the first time in history, we know for sure before the match begins that it is going to be an Asian country. However, it is immeasurable how much my heart wants it to be the larger of the two.