ICC Champions Trophy 2013 Final - LOL report

There are times when you miss Lalit Modi. Had he been heading the ICC, he would have looked at the weather conditions and moved the game to another venue in a nearby country. But fairy-tales of that sort happen only in the IPL, they say. May be the ICC should have just given the captains a hacksaw blade, asked them to cut the trophy into two halves and take it home.

Star Cricket started to run out of highlights packages. How worse could it possibly get when there are rain interruptions even in those highlights? Rain break within a rain break. Inception and all that. It was a long wait before the groundsmen finally declared the ground ready. “Wait a minute! This game must be fixed, how can the rain stop right in time for a T20?,” said nobody

Former India captain Sourav Ganguly was seen wearing a light blue suit, probably borrowed from Howard Wolowitz of the Big Bang Theory. There were more England cricketers than fans at the venue. We witnessed bright sunshine, as if Jadeja took a deep breath and blew the clouds away. Rohit Sharma got out before anyone could compare him to Tendulkar. Some call him a taller version of Justin Bieber, the others call him Barbie, but he did bowl well, did Stuart Broad.

And there came the Bollywood movie moment where the hero gets beaten up by the villain initially. England were firmly on top with India losing Raina and Dhoni quicker than they used to lose Gambhir and Sehwag at the top of the order. Virat Kohli dished out quite a few swear words with the bat before getting out to Anderson. Ashwin didn’t last long and was out in his signature fashion – run out. Clearly, Ashwin wouldn’t have starred in ‘Bhag Milkhaa Bhag’ if he were an actor. ‘Keep calm and trust Ravindra Jadeja‘, they said and India ended up with 129.

Ashwin can’t run. So Dhoni makes him stand in the slips. Ashwin doesn’t want to run. So he dives and catches everything. After he took a scorcher to dismiss Cook, Trott walked in and Indians weren’t too bothered. Trott has the habit of scratching his mark quite often and Indians expected him to also create rough areas for Ashwin and Jadeja by doing so.

Wickets kept falling! Root lost his wicket seconds after Kohli was brought in as a close in fielder. Maybe Kohli just asked Root which part of the face Warner punched him. The third umpire too seemed to be scared of Jadeja and made a blunder by ruling Bell out stumped, even though it wasn’t clearly evident from the replays whether his foot was grounded or not. Some believed it was just another one of Jadeja’s black magic tricks. Nasser Hussain would have definitely called the umpire a donkey had he been on air when that happened. Unfortunately, there was no tea break either for England to request Dhoni to reverse Bell’s decision.

One just couldn’t keep Ashwin out of the game. He took catches, wickets, and ran like Usain Bolt after picking wickets. Can’t help but wonder why he doesn’t do the same while batting. While Morgan and Bopara, an Irishman and and Indian, started to raise the English hopes, Dhoni persisted with the long-haired Ishant Sharma, who didn’t need the help of a towel to indicate that he would be taken for plenty of runs. Not just the crowd, but also the wicket was favoring the Indians. The ball gripped and turned like it did in the movie ‘Lagaan’ when Kachra bowled.

There was outrage when Dhoni asked Ishant to bowl his 4th over, having taken for close to 10 runs an over in his first three. Maybe Ishant washed all of Dhoni’s clothes during the Champions Trophy and he was just returning the favor. Ishant could have had a better chance of bowling well had he bowled spin, some thought. But he picked up two key wickets, of Bopara and Morgan, surprising everybody including himself.

It seemed as if England were waiting for the Ashes to use the batting powerplay. They kept it for the final two overs but the damage had been done. Harsha Bhogle tried to shout at the top of his voice and made sure we didn’t miss Ravi Shastri in the closing stages of the game. With six runs needed off one ball, Ashwin bowled a dot ball and India had won. Dhoni, despite the grey hair, celebrated like a kid for the first few seconds before he decided to go back to the Duncan Fletcher mode.

England were frustrated and dejected. If they had a time machine, they would probably go back in time and un-invent cricket. It’s been that kind of a journey for them. Kohli’s Gangnam Style and Jadeja’s impersonation of Dwayne Bravo were the highlights of the Indian team’s victory lap.

India were invincible throughout the tournament. At this rate, India might even win the Ashes.