Sunday Snippets
By Venkatesh Raghavan
While India’s fortunes in the longer format of cricketing encounters, namely One Day Internationals has improved significantly from their being treated as minnows through the seventies, its fortunes in T20 World Cup tournament have conformed to a topsy-turvy state of affairs. India began by winning the first T20 World Cup tournament in 2007. From then on, its performance stayed below par till it managed to reach the finals of the tournament again in 2014, only to get defeated by Sri Lanka.
One of the reasons for India’s inconsistent performance in T20s despite the team having a robust image in longer formats of the game is the highly unpredictable nature of this short format. For instance a team may look down in the dumps at 36 for four wickets. Subsequently a sterling partnership rescues the batting side. It helps the batting side score anywhere between 160 runs to 170 runs in their allotted 20 over. With passage of time, spectators of the T20 version of the game got accustomed and also resigned to fast fluctuations in a team’s fortune.
The 2010 semi-finals between Australia and Pakistan is one of the most memorable matches when it comes to fluctuation of fortunes. Australia had just one over left to bat and needed twenty plus runs in the final over to make it past Pakistan’s score. I recall this World Cup fixture due to an anecdote narrated by one of my friends. He watched the match till the penultimate over when Australia looked almost down and out. He then switched off the television set, mentally prepared to watch a Pakistan-England final.
The next day, without having read any newspaper or for that matter accessing any source of information on the final scores of the Australia-Pakistan semi-final fixture, he switched on the television to watch the T20 World cup final. He was surprised to see the Australian side lined up against England. It took him some time to comprehend how this had come to pass. Only after the replay of the final over was played on the television set, did he understand that Australia had snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in the final over of the match.
Down memory lane, when it comes to realm of the first T20 World Cup final between India and Pakistan, then too Pakistan had looked very close to victory though having lost plenty of wickets. In the nick of time, the Indian side managed to snatch their last two wickets and clinch victory by a margin of two runs. In the current T20 tournament however, India had been squarely trounced by Pakistan by a 10 wicket margin and subsequently lost miserably to New Zealand owing to a miserable batting display.
As of now India’s semi-final hopes rest on New Zealand losing to Afghanistan in their next fixture, which is as unlikely as Mumbai getting flooded by rains in the month of March. For our supporters and enthusiasts however, any straw of hope is worth clinging to. In cricket, as it’s often said nothing gets over till the last ball is bowled. It may be recalled that Indian fans broke television sets after our team lost to Pakistan in the current tournament. No idea how they will react when the New Zealand Afghanistan tie concludes with an expected result.
