South Africa needed 16 runs in six balls, as Hardik Pandya ran in to bowl the game. He looked to execute the yorker, but it transformed into a low full toss. The six was flying, as was the heart rate of the Indian fans and players getting up. Then came Suryakumar Yadav, who out of nowhere ran in and grabbed a sensational catch to dismiss David Miller.
India came into the final of the T20 World Cup at the Kensington Oval, in Barbados with an unbeaten run, having already got the better of all the teams, they faced in the group stage and the ‘super eight’ round of the tournament.
The Australia game, where the team showed composure and belief in defense shows how dominant they are in this T20 World Cup, and then when they blew away England in the semi-final in Guyana, the puzzles are sitting at the right places.
‘Our presence of mind is very important’- Suryakumar Yadav
Suryakumar Yadav was coming into the final of the competition, on the back of his match-winning fifty, but what’s important to understand is his struggle under pressure in the final. He didn’t contribute much against Australia too in the ODI World Cup final in Ahmedabad, and the same story continued in this final.
They came under pressure, losing two wickets in the second over when Suryakumar Yadav walked into the middle. The South Africa team made some good planning, as they decided to go short against him, with a slower delivery with the square leg back in the boundary line.
Sky went with the shot and found the fielder. Then it was Axar Patel and Virat Kohli who stitched up a 72-run stand for the fourth wicket, before which Shivam Dube came and displayed his power, to smack the spinners all around the park.
The target looked a bit stiff, for the Africa side, who didn’t have a great start at that moment, losing Reeza Hendricks early in the chase. Then the same happened with Aiden Markram, before Quinton de Kock made the same mistake.
What was quite fascinating was that the required run rate never actually went beyond the ten-run mark, and then came the winding knock from Heinrich Klassen, who just belted the spinners all around the park. Axar Patel, Ravindra Jadeja, or Kuldeep Yadav- everyone was bashed out of the ground.
But Suryakumar Yadav kept his calm, when the Miller catch was catch was coming, the attention of the whole stadium and the country was on him, and the ball was traveling with sheer pace. He spoke about how he tried to keep his control in hand while grabbing it and it was also the wind that helped him a little in the process.
‘Now it’s easy to say. But at that time, it felt like a trophy was sailing over the boundary to the other side. But yeah, in that moment, you don’t think the ball will cross the boundary line and go for six. Whatever was in my control, I tried it.’ Suryakumar Yadav opened up on the match-winning catch of David Miller. ‘And wind was also a good factor at that moment and helped me a little bit. And we have done a lot of practice sessions with our fielding coach and taken a lot of catches like this. So when it comes to a game like this, our presence of mind is very important.’
Down the years, it would remind one just like it does now of the Kapil Dev catch that he caught off Viv Richards to write a new history for Indian cricket.
‘I feel this is a funny game. It’s a fantastic leveler and the game isn’t finished till the last ball is bowled. It was, I will not lie. At some moment we felt there is gap between our victory and their win.’ The Mumbai-born expressed in the same interview. ‘But back of the mind, you remind yourself all the hard work you have put in the last 2 months and 2 years, post 2022 T20 World Cup.’
The 33-year-old reflected on how the game was slipping away from then, but the belief was there on Jasprit Bumrah and Arshdeep Singh to turn things around.
‘All that was running in my mind in the last 5 to 6 overs of the game. We had Bumrah’s 2 overs and Arshdeep’s 1 and they were at the top of their game. So I had a belief that these guys can turn the game around.’ Suryakumar Yadav concluded.
India, in this process, joins England and West Indies to win the T20 World Cup twice.