India's World Cup cricket victory: the measure of a nation

It is 3pm in a small British bar in the tourist state of Goa about 550km south of Bombay – where the country's cricketers are harrying Sri Lanka's batsmen in the early overs of the World Cup final.

It is 28 years since India last won this most cherished of titles in a nation so crazy about the game. There are fewer than nine hours to go until it does so again. But we don't know that yet.

Mohinder Amarnath, the man of the match in the 1983 World Cup, is certain, however, that the moment has arrived to repeat his team's success. Every Indian can realise their dreams through the 11 men on the field today, he says.

He need not have worried. Corrin, the eponymous owner of the Goan bar, is reaching for a brush, and dipping it into the pot of orange acrylic paint on the table in front of her. She holds the arm of the little Indian girl in front of her, draws the first rectangle of the national flag, hands the brush to Sonny, the barman, and watches him draw the white and green stripes. The girl, the daughter of the beautician who runs the shop upstairs, beams, delighted, and skips away to show off her affirmation of support for the home team.

In the street outside, a truck thunders by, horn blaring, Indian flags fluttering in from the cab. The picture is repeated across the country; millions are glued to their televisions or radios, donning their replica shirts, daubing themselves in the national colours. India is partying; each successful delivery from its bowlers greeted by a round of beating drums. The country that has made cricket its national game is certain that this year, finally, it will capture the ultimate prize, the World Cup.

India is certain that this is no more than it is due. It has already celebrated what many in the country regard as the real final, victory over its most reviled opponent, the notoriously unpredictable – unless you happen to be a friendly bookmaker – Pakistan team, which on Wednesday managed to throw away a magnificent bowling performance to lose ignominiously.

And India was desperate for this victory; the humiliation of the Commonwealth Games corruption scandal was still fresh; the country's recent diplomatic successes – not least towards a permanent seat on the UN Security Council – has been overshadowed by fresh concerns about its aspiration to be regarded as a first world nation.

This is a nation demanding international approval: buoyed by the news that projections now show it will overtake China as the world's most populous nation by 2030, there is a sense that its time has come.

As Saturday dawned, prayers were said, puja [offerings to the gods] were made, anything to give the Indian team an edge. Across the country, people painted themselves in the blue of the national team strip or in the orange, white and green of the flag, and prepared to party.

Bars and hotels hiked prices and charged admission to the more rarefied environments. In many places, TV screens were set up and even when the big screen was not an option, the nation gathered anywhere that a television was on, peering over each other's shoulders to catch a glimpse of the match.

In Corrins', even Sonny was applauding as Sri Lanka upped the ante in their final overs, smashing the ball hither and thither. Then a nation of – according to the new census figures – 1.2 billion fell silent as top batsman Sehwag fell to the second ball of the Indian innings.

Yet important as the game was, some felt that there was a sense of anticlimax after the Pakistan game. "The excitement among people is lacking," Manoj Kumar, a hotel manager, told the Times of India.

Not so among the Sri Lankans, who had sidled into the final without the fireworks of the Indian progress. Captain Kumar Sangakkara pulled no punches when he explained what it meant to a country even more desperate for international approval after the end of three decades of bloody civil war: "It means everything. We have come through a very tough period. A lot of people have laid down lives for our country. In this new future, hopefully we can take home the World Cup, and that will be even more occasion for celebration."

Gautam Gambhir, the Indian batsman who stabilised the nation's innings after the loss of influential opener Sehwag, was no less compelling when he told a news channel that India had to win to honour the dead of the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai: "For me it will be dedicated to the people who lost their lives in the 26/11 massacre."

For India, the desire to be taken seriously by other nations in sport is perhaps more important than diplomatic point-scoring. Like its neighbour China, it has been unable to translate a mass of bodies into international sporting success. In terms of international trade, it has come on in leaps and bounds, yet still it is unable to project that power into other fields.

Such desperation for success was reflected in the way many in the country fell back on superstition in their desire to ensure success. One fan, Ritangshu Bhattacharya, from Delhi, assured journalists that he would be attempting to tip the odds in India's favour by defying nature: "I won't pee in the entire match… I feel whenever I go to the loo, a wicket falls or India drops a catch."

Even his stoicism was outdone by one politician from the state of Madhya Pradesh, who stood from 10am to 10pm during the India-Pakistan match.

In Corrins', there is no doubt about who should have won: "You have to support the team, don't you?," she said. "We live here, we have to support the local team, however it goes."

It is 10.45pm, and MS Dhoni, the Indian captain, is hammering the ball to the boundary again. Six to win, two overs. There are fireworks going off everywhere, drowning out the commentary. India knows it has won. It is the Pakistan game all over again: victory from defeat, India defiant.

Six runs, and he smacks it over the boundary. The fireworks explode. In the cities, there is madness; in the villages, too, people are hugging and screaming. The firecrackers are exploding, the night a blur of colour. India wins.

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Muttiah Muralitharan is a magician whose prestige will never fade.

The Sri Lankan team are in Mumbai, staying at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, so beautifully restored after the horrendous attack two and a half years ago. It is a fortress now, an exclusion zone surrounding it, so that the old Moghul-style Gateway to India and its concourse, normally thronged and past which the terrorists stormed from their boats, stands alone with its flocks of pigeons. Inside, Muttiah Muralitharan sits, nursing his injuries and hoping that his body can stand one more hurrah in the Wankhede Stadiumon Saturday.

Of course Murali will be fit – even if it is only "ish". He would not miss this for the world and no cricket lover would begrudge him a last appearance on a grand stage. No cricketer, and few sportsmen indeed, can have divided opinion as much as Murali but he is one of an indefatigable kind. He is adored and applauded as one of the two greatest spin bowlers of his generation or derided as a cheat, if an inadvertent one, for the accommodation of whom the laws of the game have been amended. There is no middle ground.

Over almost two decades, since he was no-balled in Australia in what looked like a cruelly premeditated act, the scrutiny has been unrelenting. Even the spelling of his name comes into dispute (we have no letter that translates from his native tongue the sound – somewhere between a "d" and a "th" – in the middle of his surname. He simply says "as you wish": he signed with a "th" for me.

I sit in the former camp, regarding him as a genius, a freak of nature whose unique physical attributes, to be found in his shoulder and wrist, make him capable of doing things with a cricket ball that others without his abilities should not even contemplate. It is, to sidetrack a second, an unfortunate consequence that one aspect of his legacy has been to sow the seeds for a generation of bowlers who, seeking to emulate his doosra, really do throw it. We have seen more than one of those in this World Cup. So, for me, it is fitting that he should be able to bow out from international cricket as a World Cup finalist and, perhaps, as a winner.

Were he not to play, then Scott Styris of New Zealand, lbw to his final delivery in Colombo on Tuesday night, would be the last of a truly staggering 1,331 international wickets for Sri Lanka. It was in the aftermath of that match, midnight long gone, that a group of us sat in our hotel and, over a bottle of wine, debated Murali's contribution. There were a few naysayers, as ever, but there was plenty of support. The argument ping-ponged back and forth.

Tom Moody was listening, quietly. Then he spoke, and the reason I mention it now is because we all have heard a hundred times how Murali has been tested repeatedly and cleared; how the parameters for flexion of the arm were altered not to accommodate Murali but because 99% of bowlers were shown by the most modern equipment to transgress the previous standards; how he has bowled his full range of deliveries with his arm in a brace; and how people still wish to believe the evidence of their own eyes rather than see him as a prestidigitator.

But this was different – to me, anyway. Moody was Sri Lanka's coach from 2005 until after the last World Cup final and he explained once more the way that Murali's shoulder can rotate abnormally; how he can touch his inner forearm with his fingertips (try it and see how near you get); how he is a wrist spinner who is almost a mirror image of a leg-break bowler; and, of course, how his arm is permanently bent.

So much we know. Moody continued. One day, he said, when Sri Lanka were in Perth, Murali went missing. When he turned up, it was discovered that on his day off he had taken himself to the University of Western Australia, where many of the tests on his action had been conducted. He told neither his colleagues nor the team management where he was going but he came back with a dossier. Apparently, he had heard that for all the previous investigations, there were still some voices suggesting that the tests had counted for little, because he had not been tested while bowling at different speeds.

So, Moody said, under lab conditions, he bowled the lot. Off-breaks, topspin, doosra, from all angles and at a whole range of speeds. Not one delivery came close to, never mind exceeded, the 15-degree limit. Moody still has the report, detailing every ball bowled.

The most striking thing, though, was Murali's motive. He did not go to the lab to prove yet again that he was clear. He went because he was starting to wonder whether there might not be some truth in what his more informed critics were saying. There was no way he wished to play a game in which he might genuinely be cheating. So he went to dispel that in his own mind and he came away content. If he had not been vindicated, the chances are that he would have abandoned cricket.

I think such genuine altruism by one of the truly great sportsmen needs recognition.

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England captain Andrew Strauss to take extended break after Ashes and World Cup campaigns

Strauss spent just three days at home over a five-month period on England duty. In that time, he featured in all but two of the team's 28 matches in all formats, including five Ashes Tests.

Kevin Pietersen, meanwhile, is resting after hernia surgery, while Paul Collingwood will receive treatment for his knee in the coming weeks. Michael Yardy with depression will be available for all fixtures "subject to consolation between player, Sussex CCC and England medical staff".

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India v Pakistan: Cricket World Cup 2011 match report

The Great Game between these feuding neighbours failed to materialise after India won a faltering match to take their place on Saturday against Sri Lanka in the World Cup final, their first for 23 years. They were deserved winners, mostly because a team who squander five chances, as Pakistan did when India batted first, do not deserve to win anything let alone the semi-final of cricket’s biggest tournament.

“We’ve had our struggles in this tournament, but we said it was important to peak at the right time,” said MS Dhoni, India’s captain after his team had won by 29 runs. “Everyone in this side has been tested and I think we’re ready for the final.”

Pakistan have lost all five of their World Cup meetings with India and those misses were instrumental in losing this one, after they allowed India to post 260, a target that was always going to be a tough chase under pressure.

Batting under lights has its challenges too, especially when squadrons of flying insects began to swarm over the ground. In a game that sought to guard itself against most man-made perils this was one the thousands of police and soldiers could do little about and Pakistan went quietly amid a blizzard of beating wings.

The charitable view of their performance is that it was nerves on the day, though when you hand Sachin Tendulkar, one of the best one-day batsmen five innings to make his 85 (he was dropped four times), there is a masochistic streak that deserves the opprobrium of its supporters, who in time-honoured fashion will no doubt torch a few effigies over the next day or so. If they do, and there is certainly a precedent from the 1996 World Cup when Wasim Akram had his house stoned as well, Wahab Riaz and Pakistan’s two off-spinners, Saeed Ajmal and Mohammad Hafeez, ought to be exempt after sharing eight of the nine wickets to fall between them. Afterwards, Shahid Afridi, the Pakistan captain, congratulated his opponents. “I’d like to congratulate the Indian team and the Indian nation, they played better than us and deserved their win,” Afridi said. “But I’d like to thank the Pakistan people as well. We tried our level best and I hope thy enjoyed it.”

Although one of the less intimidating crowds in India, given Mohali’s 28,000 capacity and a preponderance of VVIPs, or what Roy Keane used to call the prawn sandwich brigade, apprehension was apparent, even in a veteran like Tendulkar. What else could have explained his scrappy innings after Virender Sehwag had given India a blistering start with a lightning knock that gave the crowd an early reason to show its voice?

This is probably Tendulkar’s last chance to win the World Cup so perhaps that, as well as having his hundredth international hundred hanging over him, added to the pressure of an already tense occasion. Yet, whatever it is that disrupts the little master’s flow, it afflicted him yesterday and he should have been out on 27, 45, 71 and 80.

Before those let-offs, he had also survived an lbw and a stumping, both of them adjudicated by TV replay, by a hair’s breadth. The lbw, off Saeed Ajmal was given out by umpire Ian Gould and looked just until Tendulkar asked for a review and the replays showed it to be just missing leg-stump. But great players will take any generosity given them and make you pay and the cost of Pakistan’s squandering was painfully apparent when the next highest score on India’s card was Sehwag’s 38.

Sehwag’s assault, which consigned Umar Gul to the status of net bowler after he struck him for five fours in an over, showed the need to attack new ball, which came onto the bat. He looked unable to be contained until Riaz got one to squat a bit off the pitch to have him lbw, the first of five wickets in an impressive performance.

India were 99 for one after 15 overs, but when Pakistan chased under lights, they were 29 runs short of that after the same period, which meant they had to increase the rate just as spin and reverse-swing began to make timing and placement more difficult. As the rate rose, none came to grips with it, though Umar Akmal at least raged against it briefly with a brisk 29 that included two sixes.

Misbah-ul-Haq, who was last man out for 56, played the long game after some of the earlier batsman had tossed their wickets away, but he ran out of viable partners to be a serious threat. Hafeez, who had bowled so well earlier, perished playing the kind of scoop shot usually seen in frothy T20 matches but not on an occasion of this gravitas. Asad Shafiq, too, undid his good work, a modicum of pressure being all that was needed for him to attempt a risky cut shot against Yuvraj Singh and lose his off-stump.

The success of Pakistan’s two spinners brought India’s decision to drop one of theirs for the pace of Ashish Nehra into question, but Nehra, castigated after India’s defeat to South Africa in the group stage, was superb with his skiddy left-arm swingers. Munaf Patel, also bowled well, leaving Yuvraj, bowled by a full toss for a golden duck when he batted, as the only weak link with the ball. But his left-arm spin held up well enough for him to take two for 57 from his 10 overs.

The lack of spark to the match did not prevent it being a TV phenomenon and reports from around the world spoke of drastic cab shortages in Toronto, Oslo and Hackney. Advertising rates during the match were said to be running at $25,000 per 10 seconds of air time, though with an audience reckoned to be one fifth of the world’s population, it was no doubt money well spent.

It appeared to pass without major incident too, with nothing more explosive than Amritsari chicken. The prime ministers of both countries, India’s Manmohan Singh and Yousaf Raza Gilani of Pakistan, attended and shook hands with both sides after the national anthems. Plenty of Bollywood stars also came, cricketers being about the only thing above them in the pecking order.

There will be even more at the final on Saturday in Mumbai, where two teams that bat deep and have variety to their bowling attacks, will contest a fascinating final.

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