TV VIEW: INCREDIBLE INDIA, it said in large letters on the pitch in Mumbai. Sky Sports for most of Saturday fell on a game that gave us its own peculiar brand of wonder. That India and Sri Lanka were contesting the World Cup final brought an unique energy and gaiety. But it was the drama on the pitch, the new phrases and language we had to comprehend as well as the sheer breadth of what the win for India means to a majestic, troubled country that drew interest.
Phrase one: “It was a little bit of a leg cutter.”
Sky didn’t spare the commentators either. They arrived in small squadrons of three so frequently that you couldn’t keep track. Former greats, former World Cup winners and World Cup captains decorated the studio; Sanjay Manjrekar, Russel Arnold, Sunil Gavaskar, Nasser Hussain, Mike Atherton and David Lloyd all had to wrestle with names such as Sri Lankan batsmen Mahela Jayawardene and Thilan Samaraweera and the wonderfully named Indian bowler Zaheer Khan (was that not the Tiger’s name in Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book?)
Phrase two: “Just saw a difference in length and helped it to third man.”
Between bowlers and batsmen the music in Wankhede Stadium blared out a Bollywood party theme and the fans, who former English captain Atherton recently described as febrile, brought a gaiety that you seldom see at Lord’s.
Between the balls we also had a taste of what the GAA could be letting themselves in for if this weekend’s technology trial passed off peacefully. And the crowd loved that too. While Croke Park is making subtle passes at the use of cameras, cricket is positively promiscuous. If there is any sport that has fully embraced the tool of slow motion, predictive bounces and audio replays cricket has.
With Nuwan Kulasekara in batting for Sri Lanka, a claim came from India that a ball was nicked by the bat and caught behind. It went to the third umpire. He watched it in real time. He watched it in slow motion. He reversed it, moved it forward again. He turned up the audio from the microphones that are placed in the stumps to try to hear a giveaway sound. He then watched it in real time again. Was there a click or not? Was it loud enough to overrule the on-field umpire?
“I personally heard a little clicking in my ear from the stumps mic but not enough to convince the umpires,” said Hussain as Kulasekara survived and went on to hit a quick-fire 32.
Phrase three: “Just like a knuckle ball. He didn’t run his fingers down the side.”
Most of us will never experience Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s nirvana in playing a man-of-the-match performance in his own country on his way to winning a World Cup final after a 28-year wait.
Cricket is India’s national sport. For a population of 1.2 billion this was vastly bigger than England winning the football World Cup in Wembley.
Even Lloyd’s flat north of England accent injected some emotion into the festival as Sri Lankan fast bowler Lasith Malinga tried in vain to shift the Indians, his black curly hair tinged with golden highlights and his made-for-television flashing smile hurtling down the pitch towards Dhoni at the tail end of the match.
India, needing 33 from 33 balls, then 22 for 22 balls. The Indian crowd told the story as it counted down. Malinga, unusually impotent, used put a pair of old cricket boots at the stumps during practice and spend hours hurling his amazing sideways missiles at them.
Phrase four: “It’s only inches. If you are short with a Yorker, it’s racing to the boundary.”
And so it was with Dhoni. A behemoth of a six on the final ball as he manoeuvred himself to strike and it was all over in an explosion of fireworks. A strikingly pleasant day, uniquely exotic, colourful, noisy and sub-continental replete with the Sri Lankan President sitting among the dignitaries in a huge over-stuffed sittingroom sofa. More Asian cricket finals please.
On RTÉ the Magners League came to us on Saturday evening. Munster and Leinster were typically hammer and tongs with intervals of calm while Ronan O’Gara and Jonathan Sexton kept the board ticking over. Munster’s win was sweet after their string of losses to Leinster but the sour taste in Limerick was Paul O’Connell hobbling off.
Was he dropped by his lifters? Did he just land horribly to one side as he hit the ground from the lineout. Also unafraid of using cameras, we saw the replay. The lifters were taking some heat in the studio. They dropped him, was Brent Pope’s instinct, with former Irish forward Donal Lenihan noting that O’Connell hit the ground moving in a sideways motion and didn’t fall straight to the ground. Incredible misfortune and in a World Cup year. Sadly no fireworks in Limerick for O'Connell.
