ICC World Cup: Turning point - Head in the palms
Narendra Modi Stadium, India lost to Australia. To its fielders, who killed 50-60 runs. If one needs to focus on the locus, it boiled down to Travis Head.
Not just the watershed by Travis Head at the crease with 137 runs, but that catch. The catch that dismissed Rohit Shar ma, and pushed back the power of statistics to the shadows.
But before that, a bit on statistics and its discontents. The chances of being struck by lightning is less than one in a million.
What they never tell you is context, more than chronology, samjhiye.
The number of lightning strikes increases geometrically – to far less than one a million – in tropical climates where lightnings are common. Which is what happened at the Narendra Modi Stadium where Australia became world champions for the sixth time.
On the same track, winning ten World Cup matches on a trot, as India did, doesn’t necessarily shield you from losing the 11th game. Which is pretty much what happened at Ahmedabad on Sunday.
Much talk was about dew.
As it rightly should have been. But swing or ‘dew diligence’ was not enough. It was, honestly, Aussie fielding.
More than BumrahShami in the Aussie innings, it was the two boundaries between the 11th and 40th overs that trimmed India to being the second best.
There is no doubt that at the pivot of it all was Travis-bhai. That catch to dismiss Rohit Sharma, when the captain was on turbo and 47 and looking to pick off flies with a sledgehammer – the Indian crowds only expect sledgehammers, alas --changed the narrative very early on – in the 10th over, to be precise. Glenn Maxwell bowled a pregnant, flighted delivery.
