Glenn Phillips gave the ball a little more air. Shreyas Iyer charged down the track but got too close to it. The ball went up in the air and straight to Kyle Jamieson at long-on, who dropped it. Game over? Not quite. New Zealand refused to go down with a fight.
Shreyas was 44 when he was given the reprieve. India were 173/3 in the 37th over, chasing 252 to win the Champions Trophy. Also, Shreyas was in the middle of a very good partnership with Axar Patel. A Phillips blinder to dismiss Shubman Gill had brought the Kiwis back in the game after the first drinks break during India’s innings. It felt like a Jamieson howler cancelled that out. Well, not quite.
The drinks played a trick again. This time, it accounted for Shreyas’s scalp – the well-set batsman perishing to Mitchell Santner almost immediately after resumption. Three consecutive dot balls induced a release shot and Rachin Ravindra took a fine catch at short fine leg. The equation came down to 69 off 68 balls, with six wickets in hand.
India bat deep, up to Ravindra Jadeja at No. 8. But pressure can do funny things in a high-octane game. It got big even on the mighty West Indies once in a World Cup final, against India’s 183. So, when Axar played a poor shot to be dismissed by Michael Bracewell in the 42nd over, nerves got jittery. India were still 49 runs shy of the target.
Eventually, though, it came down to an unassuming Bangalore boy and a flashy Surat lad to get their team over the line. Cometh the hour, cometh KL Rahul and Hardik Pandya. And they did it in a very assured manner. Via a 38-run sixth wicket partnership. When Pandya got out in the 48th over, India had one hand on the Cup. He scored a run-a-ball 18, priceless in the context of the game. Rahul remained unbeaten on 34 off 33 balls. He has owned the No. 6 spot in the ODI side. The team management knew what they were doing.
Jadeja hit the winning runs, a pull to the deep square leg boundary for a four. Virat Kohli gave him a hug after he finished his bowling spell. If, going ahead, it becomes the all-rounder’s final ODI, he will treasure the memory all his life. “I’m either a hero or a zero,” Jadeja told the host broadcasters after the match. Everyone who is attached to Indian cricket knows that the southpaw is a credit to the game.
This is India’s third Champions Trophy success, and a second straight ICC title, after winning the T20 World Cup last year. It made even Gautam Gambhir a touch emotional. The head coach gave his captain an embrace and all the discord vibes that had filled column-inches in the lead-up to this tournament, vanished in thin air. Rohit walked away with the Player-of-the-Match award. He now has the leeway to decide his future on his own terms. “It was all about getting that backing from the team,” the skipper said at the post-match presentation.
Rohit led from the front in the final, scoring 76 off 83 and making things easier for the batsmen to follow. Kohli fell cheaply, but as he said post-match: “We played as a unit.”
Collective effort formed the bedrock of India’s success. Not often does one see an ODI side with such quality top down. This has to be one of the best-ever 50-over sides.
Also, India needed to bury the ghosts of the disaster Down Under. “We needed to make amends after what happened in Australia,” said Kohli. The ex-captain and his successor, Rohit, did the ICC four-peat on Sunday.
Earlier, a four-pronged spin attack once again brought India back in the game after Rachin was threatening to take the game away in the first few overs. Varun Chakrvarthy accounted for Will Young. Kuldeep Yadav bowled a couple of beauties to remove Rachin and Kane Williamson. Yet again, Rohit lost the toss but his captaincy was superb. Despite dropping four catches, India restricted New Zealand to 251/7. The four spinners combined returned with the figures of 38-0-144-5.
India won the Champions Trophy not because they played all their matches in Dubai. They lifted the silverware because they played far better cricket than the rest.