Ten down, one to go. All that remains for India’s World Cup finalists is to turn it up to 11 at the Narendra Modi Stadium on Sunday. But this was at least a game that ran almost to the end as Daryl Mitchell played the innings of his life in Mumbai, a luminous feat of stamina, invention and muscular orthodox hitting as New Zealand chased hard in pursuit of 397 but still fell 70 short.
And so India roll on to a final that has always seemed to be the endgame in this most home of home World Cups. Perhaps when the International Cricket Council has finished looking into Team India’s role in pitch selection at this tournament it could also launch an investigation into the preternatural run-scoring appetite of Virat Kohli and the jagging, snaking craft of Mohammed Shami, who ended with a seven-wicket haul here to go with two previous five-fers. Not to mention the feeling through those 10 consecutive wins of a gathering inevitability to India’s march back to its new cricket-industrial power centre in Gujarat.
On a still, heavy day at the Wankhede stadium, India closed this game out despite briefly fraying in the middle of New Zealand’s chase as Mitchell and Kane Williamson put together a high-grade partnership. Even then this was a game that was heading only one way either side of that interlude, right from the opening over bowled in clear white light by Trent Boult, as Rohit Sharma set about New Zealand’s pace attack like a man unbuckling his belt and taking out the cleaver.
Kohli will be framed once again as the key protagonist. In a sporting nation obsessed with milestones and hero‑numbers, this will be remembered as the occasion Kohli reached his 50th one‑day international hundred, thereby surpassing the record of Sachin Tendulkar, in front of not just Sachin Tendulkar himself but the huge statue of Sachin Tendulkar looming over his Mumbai backyard: a definitive version of the iconography-of-greatness tableau that Indian cricket finds so irresistible.
Kohli batted with controlled, low-throttle brilliance, walking out after another fast start and simply running through his scales, driving with precision through the off-side, reaching a chanceless century from 106 balls.
There was a rolling wave of white noise around the stadium as that hundred came up, cut with shots on the big screen of David Beckham stood in the VVIP boxes looking slightly baffled (in fairness, unless specifically stated otherwise Beckham always looks slight baffled). Beckham had appeared on the outfield before the start to raise awareness of, in no particular order, child poverty and David Beckham. That nexus of celebrity, star wattage, players as cartoon gods, really is in full bloom at this World Cup.
An eighth score of 50-plus in 10 games took Kohli’s average to 101.57 in the tournament, and miles out on his own as top run-scorer. Odd to think that in the buildup this was billed as a career-definer for Kohli, a moment to deliver home under the most annihilating pressure.
Sharma had won the toss and chosen to bat, in the process condemning New Zealand’s players to three hours in the role of heat-addled endurance athletes under a heavy white Mumbai sky.
There is always a shemozzle over pitches somewhere. It arrived here with the suggestion that the Board of Control for Cricket in India and the national team hierarchy had had a say in which strip to use and how to prepare it. Is this a surprise, if it’s true? Obviously not. Is it the right thing at an ICC event, where the (for form’s sake) “governing body” is supposed to ensure neutral conditions? Obviously not, again.
New Zealand had an opportunity with the new ball. Full lengths, seek out the pads. Boult’s third ball was exactly this, but was whipped thrillingly over midwicket. His fourth was monstered through cover. With the ground bathed in deep yellow sun Tim Southee came running in to bowl his fifth ball of the day already decelerating like a vintage ambassador taxi juddering up a Mumbai hotel ramp.
New Zealand did not bowl well early on, going short or too full. Sharma was caught trying to hit the ball to the sun for 47 off 28. At which point: enter Virat, there in time to watch Lockie Ferguson explore at length Shubman Gill’s ability to play the short-arm swivel pull for four. The hundred came up in 12.2 overs. Rachin Ravindra was driven with such poise and grace through cover by Kohli that for a second everyone forgot to cheer and simply purred and cooed and goggled.
Mitchell Santner, a languid, scholarly figure, ambling in like a man with a small volume of poetry folded into his pocket, sent down a steady spell. Gill began to cramp, bringing Shreyas Iyer out to bat at 164 for one. And it was Iyer who gave the innings a rev, hitting the spinners straight with disarming ease. Kohli finally departed for 117, just before Iyer went to his hundred off 67 balls with eight sixes, capless and batting like a young god. At the halfway stage New Zealand required their highest total batting second, in order to claim surely the greatest team batting feat in ODI history.
The reply began with some impish aggression from Devon Conway, at which point the ball began to veer and leap and nip in the fabled evening sea breeze. Jasprit Bumrah gave way to the destroyer, and Shami’s first ball was perfectly pitched, drawing Conway into a waft and an edge.
Shami has great crease-craft, too. He jumped wider, then came in six inches to home in on at Ravindra’s off stump, drawing another edge.
The game looked to be dying on its feet, but Mitchell had begun to play with real verve as he passed 50. A brilliant hard flat reverse sweep off Kuldeep Yadav took him into the 90s off 77 balls, a man out there batting with his cricketing third eye wide open. The century came up off 85 balls to pin-drop silence. But Williamson was out next ball, chipping Shami to the fielder on the fence, Suryakumar Yadav. Shami had Tom Latham out lbw for a duck two balls later and the world had begun to slide back into its proscribed shape.
