"You go after one of our players, all eleven of us come back at you"
Whoah. What a statement by KL Rahul on and off the pitch. Not mincing words at the home of England cricket.
Yes. Home of "England" cricket. The home of cricket is Wankhede of course.
You win games frequently. You make statements rarely. This game was a statement. From Bumrah. From Kohli. From Siraj. From KL to top it off. Brilliant stuff from the lads. Proud to support this team!
Great teams do it for each other. More than the fans. More than the critics. More than themselves. Greatness awaits you once you get in that space where every other noise blurs into the distance and the shared joys and sorrow with the group is the only thing that matters.
Spare a moment for Ravi Shastri. This is exactly what Shastri might have said in a moment like this. Now every player in this team has the confidence to dish it out. They are able to do it because they are fearless about results and they care a damn about the critics.
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It's easy for British press to dismiss Kohli's team as uncouth. Only if they hadn't seen the same team playing and losing the WTC final, a game with so much riding on it, fair and square without flaring up any tensions with the well mannered Kiwis.
No. This is a team of counter punchers. They bully the street bullies, and they greet the friendly neighbours with smile. If you try to hurt their pride, they would rally and make you pay. From Paine going after Ashwin to England going after Bumrah, there is a pattern.
And no, this didn't just happen under Kohli. Remember Zaheer Khan getting livid watching jelly beans at the crease and telling KP, he would shove that bat to where the sun don't shine. That team imbibed the same spirit of not being the instigators dishing it back of provoked.
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DC truly lost the finals before it even started. Remember the scene from the Dhoni biopic where he tells his teammate that they lost the game when they saw Yuvraj Singh stride into the ground as if he owned the place? There was a bit of that today.
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There is a method to beating the invincibles. They give you that aura where you feel you have to do something extraordinary to go one up on them. Their simple moves create doubts. If Jayant Yadav was playing for another team they might have taken 40 off his 4. But this was MI.
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To beat the invincibles you need players who play in their own bubble. To beat Australia India needed a Harbhajan who didn't give a damn to their reputation. Who sledged them in Punjabi if he has to. You have to be the kind of person who has an almost false sense of superiority
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DC's season has been a prime example of taking your success too seriously. They got lucky to get back into the very first game against KXIP. They played well after that and won games but fitness, fielding, batting order were always a problem.
Hetmeyer was massively under utilized for a player of his potential. KXIP realized their mistake of batting Pooran too low early on and he gave them impetus. DC needed to do the same with Hetmeyer. But success with a winning combination makes you complacent.
And as @Cric_bakchod said on our recent stream, these slow pitches don't suit Stoinis the batsman. Take a lesson from MI. They didn't play Lynn the entire season knowing that he wouldn't thrive on these slower wickets. Of course the MI squad always had better back ups than others
Sell city based franchise for states that are representated. Sell the franchise at a lower cost if you have to. Build revenue streams for future. Make a franchise for Assam, for UP, for Gujarat, etc. Have them play the second division for the first couple of years of you have to.
Expansion is not sustainable if you don't increase the base of players to pick from. Change the overseas players rule. Let teams pick up to seven overseas player. Minimum four Indian players in the eleven per team. In the long run get rid of overseas cap completely.
Watched Dhoni's retirement video. Eyes got watery.
Decided it's enough for the night.
Had a drink.
Watched one last time. Eyes got watery again.
That video is not just a tribute to self, it is the story of Indian cricket in last 15 years, and with it the story of my entire youth.
Dhoni never gives away much on what goes on in his head. But may be, just may be, we get a glimpse of how his emotional side works with that final video.
There are more pictures of Dhoni with a teammate, than Dhoni all alone. Athletes have a tendency of making the retirement all about themselves with obligatory thanks to teammates. Dhoni's video was a tribute to his teammates first and a tribute to himself second.
Australia's decline is a classic case of believing in your own hype. They dominated the game comprehensively for two decades and turned a blind eye to how the landscape was changing.
When others were developing mystery spinners, Australian coaches refused to teach doosra in 2009. They believed they can keep churning out a Shane Warne every other year. This is exactly the kind of assumed moral supremacy created the sandpapergate mess. espncricinfo.com/australia/cont…