Cometh the hour, cometh the team

And India knocked out mighty Australians from its legendary campaign. It is a sort of coup d'etat and now the onus is on India to win the Cup. I have been following world cup since 1992 and i have only seen India loosing matches against Australia. I have faint memories of 1992 defeat by 1 run but 1996 World Cup defeat of 16 runs still gives me bad odor. That was the last time when Sachin massacred the mighty Australians by scoring 90 runs of 84 balls although India lost the match by 16 runs but it was a match to remember. Since 1996 India had been not able to give fight to Australians and was defeated convincingly in 1999 and 2003 World Cup matches. The World Cup final of 2003 will always make Indians cry specially to those Indians who were students during that time. I was in 2nd year of my engineering and i can easily remember that many of us were not able to eat on that day and it took almost a week to come back to normality.                

It was a more difficult match for India at Ahmadabad than for Australia. Australia has won the World Cup three times on a trot and in total 4 times in last 24 years so the hunger to win the cup was not the same for them. Things are different for India, here winning world cup means you are adding yourself to a very limited set of immortals of Indian cricket. The Neo-Indians desperately need a world champion tag and no sport is better placed to provide that than cricket. Australia started well and match was well balanced until the coming of David Hussey to the crease. Ponting was magnificent and  his century had shades of 2003 World Cup final hundred. Indian bowlers gave 10-20 extra runs in the end but still 260 was a gettable total. Sachin and Sehwag started well, Sachin was not at his best but he managed to give a decent start to India. Gambhir, Kohli played well in middle and Yuvraj-Raina brought India home just after the dangerous wicket of Dhoni "The Helicopter". It was great to see the awesome hug of Yuvraj and Raina in the end. It was a revenge of 2003 world cup final and just like all bad things come to end similarly India managed to shrug of the tag of losers against Australia. This is a new beginning of Indian cricket and Dhoni and team should not loose the golden opportunity to write the history. History remembers the winners. No one will remember who was Man of the tournament in 2003 World Cup but people will always remember the defeat of 2003 world cup final against Australia.

                                        Team looks very good to me. Dhoni, Harbhajan and Munaaf have still not performed and lets hope that they have saved their best for the last two matches. Its the time to bring the cup home. Its the cup that can join or break more than a billion hearts. Lets pray for the former. Amen.