Another humdinger and how Team India makes winning a habit

Those who don’t subscribe to these points of view had only to witness the dramatic developments of Tuesday night to change their opinion. India stormed back to steal a match they had no business winning. Sri Lanka slumped into the disappointing embrace when victory wasn’t just more pleasant but also welcomingly inviting. The Pallekele International Cricket Stadium wasn’t a place for the faint-hearted, and most certainly not if they were Sri Lankan supporters.

Bare fact 1: Leading the series 2-0, India mustered 137 for nine after being put into bat in the final Twenty20 International.

Bare fact 2: After 15 overs, Sri Lanka were firmly on target for a consolation victory, at 108 for one, needing 30 off 30 deliveries with nine wickets in hand.

Bare fact 3: In the two previous T20Is, the hosts had suffered debilitating collapses of nine for 30 and seven for 31 respectively.

Bare fact 4: In a classic case of history repeating itself, Sri Lanka found novel ways of courting disaster, losing seven wickets for 29 runs to finish on 137 for eight to somehow send the contest into a Super Over.

Sri Lanka messed up big time

This sequence of events dictated that there could only be one winner. India were buoyant merely because the match had ended in a tie in regulation play, because they should have been packing their bags long before the final ball of the thriller was sent down. Sri Lanka were dispirited, disheartened, disjointed, distressed that they had allowed a game they had bossed to slip out of their grasp.

Was it any surprise, then, that they lost their two allocated wickets in the Super Over for just two runs? Or that it was a misfield that allowed Suryakumar Yadav to score the boundary which helped his team secure a 3-0 series sweep in the Mumbaikar’s first full-fledged outing as his country’s T20I captain?

The art of winning tight contests doesn’t come too easily, or to too many. Some might point to luck being the deciding factor, but not without reason is it said that you make your own luck. India made their own luck in the final of the T20 World Cup in Bridgetown last month, refusing to keel over even when Heinrich Klaasen was taking them apart. They believed. They believed in their skills, if not their invincibility. They believed that they were one wicket away from pushing South Africa into a corner. They believed in Jasprit Bumrah, of course, but they also believed in Arshdeep Singh and Hardik Pandya. They believed that their skill and will would carry the day. They believed it was time they realised their dream, of being crowned World Champions once again.

South Africa's meltdown

Did South Africa believe? It seemed not. Once they lost Klaasen with 27 needed 24, they were afflicted by self-doubt. Ghosts of the past resurfaced in their subconscious, they were haunted by gremlins of uncertainty and tentativeness. They froze, their feet weighed down by tons of lead, their arms heavy, their minds shackled and addled and bereft of rational thought. India won that final, by seven runs, as much as South Africa lost it. In their case, it was not their immediate performances that bogged them down; South Africa were overcome by the baggage of past meltdowns which have earned them the uncharitable, distasteful moniker of ‘chokers’ in various quarters.

In this case, Sri Lanka didn’t have to cast their minds too far back. Nine for 30 unfolded on Saturday, seven for 31 a mere 24 hours later. When one is pushed to a corner, it is the darkest, most depressing and desperate times that somehow rear their ugly heads. Sri Lanka’s immediate past was littered with shameful humblings, with self-induced humiliation. That’s where their minds went on Tuesday, soon after the well-set Kusal Mendis perished at the start of the 16th over.

Sri Lanka’s bugbears

Perhaps one is micro-analysing, but the 16th and the 17th overs have been Sri Lanka’s bugbears in this series. In game one, they lost one wicket in the 16th and two in the 17th; on Sunday, it was two apiece in those two overs. That’s seven wickets in 24 deliveries in four overs combined. Tuesday reprised Saturday’s pattern but more decisively, it triggered a new low. Sri Lanka lost two wickets in the 19th over, to Rinku Singh. They lost two more in the 20th and final over, to Suryakumar. Before this fateful night, neither player had sent down a ball in T20 Internationals. How do Sri Lanka live down losing 4 for 8 in 12 deliveries to these most part-time of part-time off-spinners? How can they?

Sri Lanka went through much of their chase smug in the mistaken impression that victory was a mere formality. They batted with abandon, as they ought to have, but when push came to shove, they jettisoned commonsense. It seemed as if no one was interested in staying on and getting the job done. Adventurism trumped commonsense, big strokes were attempted when a measured single every ball was all that was required.

While their opponents stumbled from one misadventure to another, their faces tense and pale, India laughed and cavorted. Maybe they too thought the game was gone, but they weren’t going to show it. And they weren’t definitely going to give it away without a fight. Perhaps their nonchalance was affected, perhaps they were smug in the knowledge that the series was in the bag, but they weren’t merely going through the motions. After Bridgetown and the seven-run jailbreak, Indian cricket believes nothing is impossible; it’s almost a throwback to 2001 when, having lost the first Test inside three days and trailing by 274 in the first innings in the second, they rallied through VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid and Harbhajan Singh in Kolkata to demolish Australia by 171 runs. That was the Test which convinced India to never say die.

The World Cup final has reinvigorated their winning spirit, it has inculcated in them the unshakeable conviction that no matter how daunting the odds might be, they were still in with a shout. This is an Indian side that, if it’s told it has a one in a million chance of victory, will retort, “So, we actually do have a chance?” It’s not only the wounded and slighted that one must beware of.