Six weeks after it started it comes down to this: the 2003 World Cup final at the Wanderers on Sunday pits the best team in the world against the best supported team in the world. South Africans might demur, but it’s as fitting a climax to the competition as anyone could ask for.
Even before the tournament started one prediction seemed safe to make: any
team hoping to win this World Cup would have to account for Australia somewhere along the way. India’s moment of truth, then, has arrived.
The two teams played out a dress rehearsal of the final at SuperSport Park on the first Saturday of the competition. Then Australia flattened India, taking fewer than 23 overs to hunt down India’s paltry 125. The Indian captain Sourav Ganguly argues that his team needed some time to adjust to South African conditions and it’s a fair enough point, but it’s also true that this result gives Australia at least one advantage in a battle that will be fought in the mind as much as on the pitch.
Subsequently, though, India shifted up a gear. The turning point of their World Cup came at Kingsmead on February 26 when Ashish Nehra tore through England’s middle order. It was a key moment for the Indians, not least because it pointed towards what appears to be their most effective combination. They thrashed Pakistan in their following match and apart from a brief top-order wobble in the Super Six match against Kenya in Cape Town, have swept all before them.
India have gone for seven batsmen at the expense of a fifth recognised bowler with Ganguly employing himself and an assortment of part-time spinners to fiddle his way through 10 overs. There is an argument that if a six-man batting lineup that includes Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Ganguly himself, Mohammad Kaif, Rahul Dravid and Yuvraj Singh can’t score enough run to win, then a seventh batsman isn’t going to make that much difference.
Would India be a more complete side if, say, Anil Kumble came in for Dinesh Mongia? It’s a fascinating subject for debate, but it would be a surprise if, after eight wins on the trot, India were to adopt a different strategy for the final hurdle.
The decisive confrontation, however, is likely to be that between the Australian bowling and the Indian batting. More specifically between Brett Lee and the Indian top order and, if you want to personalise this even further, between Lee and Tendulkar.
As the competition has worn on, Lee has emerged as the consummate fast bowler. Fearsomely quick, he has added remarkable control to his game. His hat-trick against Kenya climaxed with the perfect yorker; against Sri Lanka he beat and bowled Marvan Atapattu with sheer pace. He has already matched the previous record for wickets in a World Cup, the 20 taken by both Geoff Allott and Shane Warne in 1999 and if he claims four more today he will go past Chaminda Vaas’ 23 to set a new record by himself.
So well has Lee bowled in the past few weeks that Australia have scarcely noticed the departure of Jason Gillespie. That, in itself, speaks volumes. On Sunday, though, he will bowl to the tournament’s best batsman, indeed, to one of the greatest batsmen of all time. Tendulkar’s 83 against Kenya on Thursday lifted his total of runs for this World Cup to 669. He has scored them at around 90 runs for ever 100 balls faced. If it may be an overstatement to argue that he is in the best form of his career, he is certainly playing better than at any stage over the past few years.
With a Tendulkar clone in Sehwag at the other end, India seem bound to match
fire with fire when they start batting It promises to be a thrilling duel and one which might decided the destination of the World Cup.
Even so, there is more to the final than Lee and Tendulkar. India’s surge has been prompted by firepower of their own as Zaheer Khan and Nehra have come through to back up the veteran Javagal Srinath. Indeed, if you look closely there is a spring in Srinath’s familiar trudge. He has half enjoyed bowling at the other end to the tyros. Zaheer has taken 18 of the wickets to fall to India, Srinath 16 and Nehra 15. There are many teams, not least of them South Africa, who’d buy a return like this from their seam attack.
On Thursday Ganguly suggested that ”every team has a bit of a weakness.Their (the Australian) top order has been scoring heavily, but if you get them out and expose them .”
This is true enough, as far as it goes, but it also tends to ignore the contributions made by Andrew Symonds, who played match-winning innings in Australia’s first and most recent games in the tournament, and Michael Bevan.
Australia are immensely powerful with the bat and they have become expert in defending totals. In fact, not since the Australians were in South Africa in 2000 for a three-match series have they batted first and failed to defend a total of 200 or more.
Neither team will lack confidence, neither side lacks matchwinners. It promises to be an epic encounter.