India Wins Twenty20 World Cup!!!

Living here in India, it’s impossible to escape the cricket craze. The streets are empty, shops close down, and students abandon their studies all to watch their Men In Blue bat and bowl their way to victory.

I admit I had only a faint idea of what cricket was about when the World Cup in South Africa started a couple of weeks ago. But in the absence of other sports to watch, I became intrigued, and then enthralled by the game. Granted the T20 is a faster version of the game, designed for modern-day short attention spans, but the momentum swings, explosive plays, and nail-biting moments are all still there.

For those who haven’t had the chance to watch much cricket, here are the basics: In the center of the cricket field is the dirt pitch, 66 feet long, with a wicket at each end. A wicket is 3 upright stumps (sticks) embedded perpendicular to the ground like |||. The batting team has a batsman at each wicket, and the other team has 10 fielders positioned around the field and 1 bowler. The bowler’s job is to bowl the ball from one end of the pitch to the other and try to hit the wicket.

The batmen have to defend their wicket, using their bats to strike the ball a bit like the batter in baseball. To score runs, the batsmen must run between the wickets, each time they run to the other wicket they score 1 run. Or they can hit the ball so hard that is goes beyond the field’s boundaries, with 4 runs for the ball rolling over the boundary and 6 runs for the ball going over through the air. The batsmen can get out when the bowler hits their wicket, a fielder catches a pop-fly, or a fielder runs them out by hitting a wicket before he reaches the wicket.

In the Twenty20 format, each side bats for 20 overs, with an over equal to 6 balls. The batting team must score as many runs as they can in the 20 overs, or until 10 wickets are taken. Since each side consists of 11 players, and each wicket must have a player, if 10 wickets are taken, the batting side has only one batter remaining, so it cannot continue batting. After the batting team posts a score from their overs, it’s the other teams turn to bat and try to chase down that score. If they can score more runs in their 20 overs, then they win the match.

Hopefully that’s enough rules to understand the basics of the game, or I just confused you further. India reached the World Cup final through a couple of very intense games. First they had to beat undefeated and home team South Africa in order to make it to the semi-final. They not only won that match, but they knocked SA out of the tournament when all SA needed was 126 runs to make it to the other semi-final. Then in the semi-finals India faced defending champions Australia, who are renowned for being great bowlers and fielders, barely letting India score single runs. But the hero of that match was Yuvraj Singh who hit 50 runs off just 16 balls, letting India run up a high target score. Australia had great batsmen, but India’s bowlers did extremely well, taken enough wickets and keeping the Aussies from getting too many boundaries to take India into the final against Pakistan.

Like any good rivalry, India-Pakistan matches are always intense battles with more than just cricket victory at stake. India batted first and the front-line batsmen started well, with Gautam Gambir leading with 75 runs before he was caught-out. But then the Pakistani bowler picked up their game, taking wickets and barely letting India get singles. Rookie Rohit Sharma saved India near the end of its overs, getting 30 runs to set a challenging target score of 157, but one that was within reach of the Pakistani batsmen.

Pakistan’s chase began terribly, with RP Singh taking the first wicket after Pakistan had made just 2 runs. He took another wicket before Pakistan could reach 40 runs, but just as things were looking good for India, Pakistan’s batting started up and soon the balls were flying over the boundaries. India took a few more wickets but they were unable to keep the pressure on Pakistan, until the 7^th wicket was taken with Pakistan needing about 60 runs from 30 balls. The match looked to be India’s with Pakistan at the end of their batting order. One of those batsmen needed to step up, and Misbah obliged, smashing 6 after 6 to get Pakistan within one shot of victory.

By the last over, India had taken two more wickets, but Pakistan needed just 5 more runs with 3 balls left with dangerous Misbah still on the field. On the third ball Misbah tried to a tricky shot to lift the ball upward to the near-side boundary for a 6 and the victory, but his ball fell just short and into the waiting hands of Indian fielder Shreesanth. That catch was the 10th wicket, giving India the victory by just 5 runs. It was an absolutely nail-biting finish that exploded in celebration both on the field and here in India. Almost immediately fireworks were going off and horns were blaring, while on the field in South Africa the Indian cricketers were celebrating a most deserved victory.

It took me a while to get into it, but this World Cup has made me into a cricket fan, though I’m going to miss watching it once I go back to the States. Maybe I can convince Dad to get satellite TV… :-D .