Oz, The World Cricket Champions 2009 and Me

While studying in secondary school (high school), I did not have an interest in cricket. Of course, when we won the national schools' cricket tournament, I was naturally pleased, but not exactly overawed by our victory. Instead, I played softball for my school and after four years of trial and error, my school team was good enough to beat our arch-rivals on their own home turf to win the State championships for the first time in history. After being awarded a federal scholarship to pursue further studies in Melbourne, the capital of Victoria in Australia in early 1982, my love for the cricket game grew exponentially. Until today, I could still recall the newspaper headlines saying "All Day Tavare", which actually referred to an English batsman who stayed the whole day at the stumps without being removed by the fielding team, which was, of course, the Aussies. That was The Ashes series. Australian cricket greats like the Chapell brothers, Alan Border, Kim Hughes and many others quickly caught my attention. With virtually nothing to do over the year end summer, I would just laze in front of the idiot box, Watching every ball that passes the boundry, every attempt to persuade the umpire to give an lbw (leg before wicket) decision and the diversity in the way the loudly cheering crowd dressed and behaved.

Fast forward 27 years into the future, the year is now 2009. Venue: South Africa. It's Oz versus Black Caps for the ICC Cricket World Cup title. Kiwis won the toss and elected to bat first. Sure they did and the 200 runs they batted were quite respectable. Towards the end, the Oz team were beginning to claim wickets like nobody's business. So, the target now is for the Oz team to reach 201 runs. Looks easy, huh, at slightly over 4 runs per over. But then, God had other plans. The New Zealand team claimed two wickets for only 6 runs. Ricky Ponting was one of the culprits. It looked like these turn of events would pave a road for a famous Kiwi victory. Unfortunately, Shane Watson had other ideas. From 6-2, the scoreboard rattled slowly to reach 100-2. At that stage, I was slightly confident that The Oz team could actually win barring any further catastrophies. The initial run rate was extremely slow, but improved as the overs ended. In the end, The Oz team kept their discipline and won by six wickets, with Shane Watson scoring his second century on the trot. Finally, it was 205-4 with two sixers from the final two balls. What a way to finish a cricket World Cup final!