Picture yourself waking up in Virat Kohli’s hotel bed on Sunday morning — not like that, obviously — and imagine for a minute how much sleep you might have managed through the night. A minute, in fact, would be pretty good going.
Sportspeople are not normal; the restless nights that precede the biggest days more likely to be born of kid-at-Christmas fever than the kind of anxious dread that would no doubt afflict mortals like you or I. Even for the superhuman, though — and Kohli ranks top of that class — days like these must do something different.
It is a cliche to describe this Cricket World Cup final meeting with Australia as India’s date with destiny, but untrue only because of the extent to which the nation, as a cricketing force, has paved the road to the occasion itself.
India, as a country, team and institution, is a behemoth, still even now on the rise, cricket’s new-era ruler flush with incomparable wealth, forger of a peerless one-day side on the brink of one of sport’s most dominant campaigns, in a tournament existing under an ICC banner for decorative purposes only, spurred on by far north of a billion acolyte obsessives.
Of those, more than 100,000 will be at the Narendra Modi Stadium on Sunday, including the populist leader who has given that ground its name, as well as demigods like Sachin Tendulkar, MS Dhoni and, presumably, just about every other living Indian cricket great. Oh, and Dua Lipa.
David Beckham is not expected to stick around, but no matter, for this is a team with its own galactico aura, Kohli simply the biggest superstar in a team comprised exclusively of them, ranked the world’s No1 in all three formats but, crucially, without a title to show for it in a dozen years.
It would not be difficult, then, to forgive those collective butterflies at the breakfast buffet in a couple of mornings’ time, and nor is it hard to understand why, externally, so many have latched onto the unimaginable burden of expectation as the one hurdle still to be overcome.
For six weeks and 10 matches, India have been flawless: unbeaten and coming no closer than 70 runs or four wickets to defeat at any stage. An 11th successive victory at this World Cup would surpass England’s longest ODI winning streak in any context.
With the bat, every member of the top five is averaging at least 50. Kohli has made three hundreds to reach a half-century of centuries in ODIs, surpassing Tendulkar’s record.
Rohit Sharma is striking at 124, a brilliant, tone-setting captain refusing to let his troops waver from aggression, as has been their undoing in the past. Shreyas Iyer, at one stage a supposed weak link, has charged into late-tournament form with 392 runs from 307 deliveries in his last four innings.
"For six weeks and 10 matches now, India have been flawless"
With the ball, Jasprit Bumrah is an all-time great already, while Mohammed Shami is the tournament’s leading wicket-taker with 23 at an average of nine (yes, nine) despite playing none of the first four games.
Ravindra Jadeja and Kuldeep Yadav are such wonderful spin operators that the semi-final hoo-ha over a used pitch might easily have backfired: why risk bringing less skilled slow bowlers into the game?
And so, more than 550 words into this preview, we offer only second mention to the opposition, five-times world champions Australia, and their unfamiliar billing as subplot underdogs, testament to the extent to which this tournament and this story is India’s.
This tournament and this story, but not quite yet, this World Cup.
