4 balls remaining, one six required

The sound in the background is the very loud cheering, cacophonous car and motorbike horns blaring, the cheers of "India Zindabad" and "Chak De India", interspersed with bursting fireworks. There is one HUGE block party going on right now on Ferguson College Road and the reason is India's win over Pakistan in the inaugral Twenty20 World Cup. The screaming, the yelling, the flag waving, is probably going on all over the country today even at this late hour.


What a final it has been. At the end of over 16, Pakistan were 104 for 7 wickets and India pretty had the game sewn up or so it seemed. 54 runs required in 24 deliveries.. not impossible, but difficult. Then Misbah ul-Haq hammered three sixes off Harbhajan Singh in a single over, the score jumping to 123. The very next over Sohail Tanvir hit Sreesanth for 2 sixes before being bowled by a lovely yorker length delivery. With 20 needed off the penultimate over, it looked mathematically possible - 3 sixes?... RP Singh got Umar Gul out on the 5th ball of his over... 17 required off 7 deliveries with the last man in. Mohammed Asif got a four off the last delivery and there was groan... 13 runs required off 6 deliveries as Joginder Sharma bowled a big big wide. Dhoni hurried over to talk to him. Misbah hit Joginder Sharma for a six and it looked like India had lost for sure.

4 balls remaining, six runs required and Lady Luck smiled on India. Much will be written about Misbah ul-Haq's choice of shot (a scoop over fine leg), much about Sreesanth's cool, calm catch, much more about the eruption that followed and how the young Indian cricket team wrote its name in the history books.

What it comes down to is this: A great game of cricket, with all the right elements of drama and tension between two extremely passionate rival teams ended up coming down to the wire and the team that won held its nerve best.


And my favourite photo tonight. This is a signboard outside a coconut/flower vendor's stand near Shrimant Dagdu Sheth Halwai Ganapati. Translated it reads " 10 rupees discount - a fifty rupee toran (chain of coconuts) for forty rupees only because India won the match (today)"