Mint Quick Edit | T20 World Cup was won by great prep work
How many teams train for low-probability events? It can make a big difference, as both of India’s T20 World Cup cricket triumphs demonstrate. In 2007, when India beat Pakistan in the final match, we had a psychological edge going into it for having beaten the latter in a league match by means of a spectacular but unprecedented tie-breaker called a bowl-out. In this rarest of rare cases, both were tied at 141 runs in 20 overs.
The odds of this are very slim, but India had actually practised bowl-outs—and won 3-0. The Cup clincher of Saturday’s final against South Africa was Suryakumar Yadav’s splendid last-over catch that dismissed David Miller. Saving a six as a fielder, a running Yadav stopped the ball within the boundary, popped it back into the air while he flitted off the field to keep balance, and then hopped back into play-space to gather it safely in his hands.
This athletic feat of rule abidance to dislodge a wicket isn’t new. It was pulled off even more elegantly by Harleen Deol earlier. Our latest Cup winners had reportedly been trained for such catches, though.
Read more on livemint.com
