Cricket is perhaps the only sport where the fate of the match could be sealed by the call of the captain. Sometimes, the odds of winning a match are greatly increased by the ability to win the toss. There's nothing called a 'good toss to lose', unless the opposition blunder and hand over the initiative. Captains invariably hope for the coin to fall the correct side so that they can decide whether to bat first or put the opposition to bat depending on the conditions of the pitch as they read it.
Tosses become even more crucial in big matches and no match can ever be bigger than the Cricket World Cup final. India played Sri Lanka in the decider of the 2011 World Cup. Needless to say, it was going to be a huge match in the careers of many players from both sides. In pristine batting conditions, it was also inevitable that the captain winning the toss would invariably choose to bat first.
One look at history and everyone knew that the advantage lay with the team batting first. In seven of the previous nine World Cup finals, the team batting first had won the match. The case was reversed in 1996 when Sri Lanka, riding on a crest of momentum chased down a challenging target set by Australia. It was the other way round in 1999. Having played cricket of the highest caliber on their way to the final, sub-continental giants Pakistan collapsed against Steve Waughs Australia in a rather one-sided affair.
On April 2, 2011, when MS Dhoni flipped the coin in front of a raucous Wankhede crowd in Mumbai, nobody was sure about the pandemonium that it might result in. It's still unclear as to what Kumar Sangakkara, the rival skipper, called. In the midst of the entire din, his answer went unheard, by Dhoni, match referee Jeff Crowe and Ravi Shastri - the toss presenter.
There has been two tales to the controversy Former England captain, Michael Vaughan , tweeted almost immediately and was pretty convinced that Dhoni had won the toss. In an apparent reference to Sangakkara, he went on to claim that the Sri Lankan captain had called wrongly and there was a bit of skullduggery involved. On the other hand, a leading cricket website claimed that the television producers clearly heard Sangakkara calling correctly, only for Dhoni and Crowe to miss it completely.
In the eventuality, the toss was replayed and Sangakkara called it correctly the second time around, beaming as he elected to bat first, much to the dismay of the Indian captain and hordes of partisan supporters. But as fate willed, that was the only thing Dhoni did wrong on that day. Chasing 275, he promoted himself ahead of Man of the Series, Yuvraj Singh, and went on to play a spell-binding unbeaten knock of 91.
With the Indians emerging victorious, the controversy surrounding the toss fiasco was soon forgotten. In hindsight, one captain knew that something was amiss. Would the issue have died down completely had India lost the final? Thats a question to which we do not know the answer even today.
No comments:
Post a Comment