By snatching the Champions Trophy from the lap of the England and forcing captain Alistair Cook to tear his victory speech, MS Dhoni’s fearless gladiators have shown that a match is not lost till it is actually lost. For once, it would not be a cliche to say that it was a total team effort, though they had not changed the playing eleven at all. Otherwise, how would they have won match after match so convincingly and claim the trophy without losing a game?
During the entire tournament, India never got into a do-or-die situation. Even in the rain-hit truncated final, where they were at a disadvantage after losing the toss, Dhoni, like Viswanathan Anand, maneuvred his pieces to get into a winning position with his brilliant end-game strategy. Dhoni’s crafty planning and intuitive bowling changes emboldened his starry-eyed teammates to give the championship match a fairy tale finish. The victory is all the more sweet as it has come in cold blustery English conditions of June.
Seldom have the Indians done well in the first part of the English summer. Come to think of it, soon after winning the 2011 World Cup, two years ago, Dhoni’s side shivered to capitulate. The weather was ideal for the Englishmen to revel, the only tide in India’s favour came when Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin extracted some unbelievable turn to leave the batsmen guessing on a pitch freshened up after a shower.
Only the present India team on current form would have seen a window of opportunity after setting a modest 130-run target, thanks to Player of the Final Jadeja’s flourish with the bat. The team refused to give in even when the match seemed to have slipped from their grasp.
They then had a glimmer of hope when Ishant Sharma removed the bulldozing Ravi Bopara and Eoin Morgan off successive balls. They jumped into the situation like true champions to pull it off, leaving England to rue over the ifs and buts of a match in which both teams had their moments of ecstasy as well as agony, rain halts making the wait excruciatingly painful. Dhoni, who after winning the 2007 Twenty20 World Cup had said he would like to have players who were willing to stand in front of a moving truck for him. He thinks he now has such daredevils under his charge.
Dhoni’s mantra for his team mates is simple: ‘We are the No.1 team and we should play like a No.1 side,’ though many Englishmen rightly believe that their team lost the match more than India winning. There is little doubt that the best team won even if England deserved to win. Dhoni justified all his moves. He said Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma gave confidence to the dressing room. He is happy to have brought down the average of his team to 26.
In the context of the recent happenings, he made it a point to compliment the board for creating excellent infrastructure for players to improve their fielding. IANS