World Champions

Light at the end of the long, bendy tunnel

The celebrations were worth watching in slow motion. Leaps, fist pumps, bearhugs. Blue jerseys, soaked in rain and unashamed, unrestrained tears, clinging to bouncing bodies. Tears of catharsis and joy. Many in Barbados, and maybe some in a corner of Chennai.

For years, the weight of expectation had grown heavier with each near miss, each agonising return from touching distance of glory. That burden, which is exclusive to athletes who spend their lives chasing perfection, eventually slipped through to those watching. Last night, when Rohit Sharma hoisted the sleek T20 World Cup trophy, that burden was not just lifted, it was shattered.

It's easy to say now, with the backdrop of pulsing Bollywood dance music, that this had been coming. But look around - can we really argue against it? There is a sense of acknowledgement and relief more than shock. India have been amongst the world's best white-ball teams for a while. Tournament after tournament, they have tantalised and ended up just short. Even if they took a disturbingly long time to embrace T20 cricket's unique dynamics, they still had the talent pool with the highest ceiling. Their failures in 2022, 2021, 2016, and 2014 were cases of good players planning and executing badly rather than them not having the tools.

When the teams were announced for this World Cup, India's squad generated more conversations around what looked off compared to what was possible. Where was Rinku Singh, arguably India's second-best T20 batter? Why were there four spinners and three seamers? Hardik, really? Some of these were merited questions.

Those clouds hung over them as they played out their first three matches in New York. They were too good for Ireland on a spicy New York pitch. So spicy that ICC had to figure out a way to prepare a friendlier pitch on short notice for the Kartarpur Corridor Clasico. On that weekend, under cloudy skies, the batters weren't very good, but the bowlers were so tight that Pakistan couldn’t wriggle out of their grip. The USA were seen away with relative comfort, but with a couple of hiccups. Even at this point, India were looking good for a spot in the semi-finals and nothing more.

Only once they dispatched Canada, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh, did the idea of “Is it on?” begin germinating. The bowlers had been firing all tournament, but now the batters were flexing too. The fielding was superb. Videos shared by the BCCI on social media platforms showed a thriving unit.

The batting tempo was being dictated from the top. It is quite surreal how good India look when Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli play well. They have operated at the outer edges of white-ball batting for a decade, but their command over the craft of batting is always astonishing. While Virat was struggling for runs in this tournament, Rohit found his touch. Haunted by the slow-burn debacle of the 2022 World Cup, Rohit had pushed for a more aggressive, high-risk batting approach for India in T20s. And he walked the talk with a broad chest and upright head. Against Australia and England, he showed, over 149 of the most exquisite runs you will wish to witness, why India's hopes of being any sort of force hinged on his blazing starts. On some days, Surya Kumar Yadav backed him up; on others, Rishabh Pant. The lower-order core of Hardik Pandya, Axar Patel, and Ravindra Jadeja added the heft. In the final, Shivam Dube earned his stripes too. The luxury of carrying four potent all-rounders, a privilege India hadn't always enjoyed, proved invaluable throughout the tournament.

When shit hit the fan in the biggest game of all, it was the familiar sight of Virat Kohli sticking it out. That six-packed insurance document had found light and fight in the World Cup final. He dragged India to a total that would prove just enough for the crown. Such a weirdly Kohli thing to score more runs in the final than over the entire tournament.

Through the World Cup, India consistently scored above par. It is not something one could say about their batting in the last four or five T20 World Cups.

Where do we even start with the bowlers? Over the last six-ish years, India have been blessed with a bowling attack that could be the envy of most teams in the world. Before getting to those that now take back gold medals, just looking at those that weren't here begins to show something. Ravichandran Ashwin, Mohammed Shami, Ravi Bishnoi, and Bhuvneshwar Kumar would walk into the starting lineup of many strong contenders.

I am reluctant to ever compare anyone to peak Tendulkar or Kohli, for those two have redefined what sustained excellence looks like, but Jasprit Bumrah is undeniably operating in that rarefied air. He has a repertoire so complete, there isn’t a situation he isn’t a safe bet at. If he was allowed to bowl all twenty overs, his team would never lose a game. Until the semi-finals, he had more wickets than the number of boundaries conceded. He finished the tournament with the best economy rate ever recorded at a T20 World Cup: 4.17. Those statistics belong to pornhub more than Cricinfo.

In Arshdeep Singh, India unearthed a worthy partner-in-crime. He displayed remarkable adaptability, bowling crucial overs whenever Rohit couldn’t default to Bumrah. His performance in the final was worthy of the Player of the Match award, but for two extraterrestrial talents showing up.

Kuldeep Yadav, brimming with raw ability for so long, has polished all that trickery with control over the past eighteen months. Rohit Sharma is an aggressive captain, so he uses Kuldeep to get him wickets, but he showed against Australia and England why he is now the complete package, capable of hurting or thwarting whenever necessary. Axar was a swiss army knife - malleable, flexible, durable. India don’t win the World Cup without his bowling in the semi-finals and batting in the final. What more can you ask of your all-rounder?

And who bowled the nerveless over that sealed the World Cup? Hardik Pandya. Called everything under the sun for months, mocked for his appearance and demeanour, for his lifestyle choices and ambition, for where he came from and where he got to. On news channels and TV programming, Hardik was painted as the outsider who had intruded rudely.

His tears came before everyone else’s. He knew, with two balls to go, that he was at the doorstep. Within two months of being boo-ed at every stadium in India, he was going to win the World Cup. Once we stop fawning over our superstars, I hope we bother to remember who picked the wickets of Heinrich Klaasen and David Miller with the World Cup on the line.

What about Rahul Dravid, though? As the Indian players walked onto the podium, there were a few droplets falling from his right eye. He had been here, in the West Indies, seventeen years back, leading the Indian team through a forgettable ODI World Cup. He had lost his captaincy soon after. This time, however, he stood as the quiet architect of this gold-streaked masterpiece, and his veil of stoicism finally gave away to the raw elation of finally securing a World Cup medal. Dravid, Paras Mhambrey, and Vikram Rathour made their debuts on the same tour of England in 1996. They now have a golden souvenir for their cupboards. Pretty neat.

The celebrations are euphoric but will eventually descend with a quiet acknowledgement. This victory, as sweet as it is, doesn't erase the memory of the 2023 final entirely. The silence from that night is still loud enough to hurt. Ask anyone who watched both games, and they'll tell you that they sat with gritted teeth and a sickness in their stomach until the last ball yesterday.

But this also feels like the perfect culmination of a journey, a hard-earned reward for a group that has consistently redefined cricketing excellence. In the last two World Cups, across formats, they have won nineteen out of twenty games. That’s ridiculous by every measure. As the confetti settles and the champagne flows, I can't help but think – this Indian team, as battle-weary as one can be, can finally wear the tag of an all-time great side without any asterisks attached.

Credit: Ricardo Mazalan

India. World Champions.