Take 1, New Delhi, India
With FIFA ranking of 165 out of 199 football playing nations, Indians were never the favorites. Goal misses don’t count and India had been high on that. The final 
pitches them against rowdy Syria, ranked 39 places above India. But that’s not much of a number, I personally feel, in case you are below 3/4th of your colleagues!
But the team was good on aggression, tactics, speed and control, good enough to register the first ever defeat for Syria in the tournament. The final whistle saw nearly 10,000 home fans at the overflowing Ambedkar Stadium join the euphoria of India’s first title victory in the ONGC Nehru Cup football tournament. The win fetched India $40,000, the entire money to be distributed among the players. Oil and Natural Gas Commission contributed a similar amount.
All in all a great match, India had done good in finals after a long long time and we will knew it was once in a blue moon euphoria, ephemeral one as we all believe. Still it was more than welcome, and we did relish it!
Take 2, Chennai, India
The defending champions face a task which would be considered as an uphill one for many of us, repeating a winning stroke. And the moment you name the word hockey, it becomes all the more, more difficult.
By now the SRK movie – Chak De India had been doing quite well at the box office. People had gobbled up the a light but heart racing movie made on sports which (quite unimaginably for a SRK starrer) had songs only as background score.
But the team shows the critics from the start only that its very much worth its salt. Not only they kept winning crucial ones, they ruined SriLanka 20-0 in the process and set a world record in the process. 20 to nil ! can you believe that? It was really sad that I had to move to Hyd just a couple of days before the final match at Chennai.
India won and hence successively defended the Asia Cup 2007 by defeating South Korea by 7 – 2. And in case you follow hockey, 7-2 against South Korea is more than impressive. This year’s Asia Cup has seen a dream run made by India. As for the statistics, check this – India ended the tournament with a jaw-dropping 57 goals, without losing a single match and during all this, conceding JUST 5 goals!! A fairytale number it is to me! All this despite the fact that teams like China and South Korea were established and hot favorites!
“Chak De India!” roared the news channels across the subcontinent!
Take 3, Johannesburg, South Africa
With no Tendulkar, no Ganguly and no Dravid; supposedly all of the mighty three of Indian cricket being absent from the new short and sexy format of the game, pundits had already christened the twenty20 Indian team as underdogs. Cmmon! Who among us all thought that we could give the kind of performance that has been exhibited, leave alone winning the world cup?
If you did then lets put it simply, you were a minority.
And infact the early few games did show the chinks in the armor of Indian team. Soon we found ourselves at so much acquainted situation of ‘do or die’, have you seen any big tournament where we were not in this position? So we win some and we lose some of these, and here, we won it this time. But then point was not in winning, it was how we had won. The Indian tail was wagging, it has been doing so from some years now. more amazingly the bowlers were actually aggressive and had an appetite for all kinds of wickets – early wickets, wickets at regular intervals, dislodging of bails with a cracking sound and all. It was the spirit in India. The team was enjoying itself out there and was like a group of boys, who are hungry for that action. The wins came by themselves.
Few years back India would have been happy at winning the further entry on run rate basis, points basis, not this team. It wanted a win! When almost everybody had written them off, the team India struck South Africa to not only give them their first ever but fatal loss; but also (surprisingly for all) hurling it suddenly out of the world cup. Even when the fate was almost sealed, you had to see the second last wicket being taken by Harbhajan. The way he reacted showed how ruthless the team was with carnage as its religion. The bowling has been amazing where the Twenty20 format was praised as batsman’s game. All its major wins have been on significant successes by bowlers. Boy I loved every bit of that sound of a wicket being cracked away!
And in case you still consider it as a batsman’s game format, then we had the best of slaughterers who loved to take the bounties. Yuvraj’s reply of sixes to a spat with Flintoff told a lot about the mental state of the gifted batsman that he is. He not only held his nerves to deliver sixes when it was fully known what he was upto from 3rd ball onwards, but the kind of the shots that he played was amazing too. The second six was taken just by a small wrist flick! a class indeed!
India had repeated the Chak De act yet again!
Take 4, BSE & NSE, India
As the sports patrons were rushing home early to witness the history in making the fed rate cut by US govt saw a surge in FDI in Indian markets with the Reliance shares leading from front. The market saw a record breaking figure of 16000 for first time and in no time it was much above the 16,500 level. Indian stock market had turned sweet sixteen and in the process creating a value for its stockholders worth its salt! Almost every share has been reporting a rise of about 10%. Only blue chip company stocks were on low, being hit by lower revenues and falling American dollar.
Result? market posted today a record rise in 6 days flat to touch 17000!!! The highest being ticked at Rs. 17,073.87
Though I feel that market is much more like a hot balloon right now, but then that’s what we all have been expecting from a long time. A correction may come up in day or two but then its not that the celebrations should wait!
