Goggles And Caps Costs Catches And Thus Matches.

Catches wins matches is probably the most popular saying in cricket. In fact the dropped catches often cost as much as a World Cup trophy. The famous saying from Steve Waugh after Hershelle Gibbs dropped him at a crucial stage in the knockout game of the World Cup 'How does it feels to drop the World Cup' has become part of the cricket folklore.

The game between India and Pakistan in the 2011 World Cup semi-final saw as many as five catches of Sachin Tendulkar dropped by Pakistan fielders. During this time, one thing I noticed is that the players who dropped these five catches of Sachin Tendulkar in the Semi-Final of the World Cup 2011 were either wearing goggles or caps in most of the instances. Misbah spilled the first catch of Sachin Tendulkar and that was not hard to take. Misbah was wearing a glass. Yunis Khan and Umar Akmal were among the players who dropped Tendulkar at different stages of his innings. Umar Akmal is a brilliant fielder, but dropped Tendulkar and he was wearing a goggle when he dropped Tendulkar.

Since then I have observed that most of the time the players are dropping catches, they are either wearing a goggle or a cap or both of them. So I think players would do well to avoid Goggles and Glasses while they are on the field.

Indian Cricket Team Deserved To Win The World Cup 2011 Even Though They Were Helped By The Opposition Teams in Knockout Stage

The presence of all-time great cricketers like Yuvraj Singh, Zaheer Khan (For the kind of role he has played in India's success in the recent times and in the World Cup), Dhoni, Sehwag, and Sachin itself make India worthy of a World Cup win. The rest of the team composed of competitive and talented cricketers.

Very few teams in the history of the game had as many great cricketers as India had during the World Cup 2011. Yuvraj is definitely one of the all time great one day batsmen. Dhoni has orchestrated many Indian chases and has played the type of role for India that Javed Miandad played for Pakistan or Bevan played for Australia. Moreover, on his day, he could prove to be the fiercest hitter of the cricket ball.

Sehwag and Sachin definitely makes one of the greatest opening pair in One Day cricket. There have been just a couple of opening pairs as formidable or stronger than Sehwag and Sachin. You just require superficial knowledge of the game of cricket to tell which pairs I am talking about. Haynes and Gordon Greenidge is one and Matthew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist is another. Saeed Anwar and Aamer Sohail are not too far behind. I think Majid Khan too formed a good pair with couple of players at the top of the order for Pakistan.

Zaheer Khan is probably the best bowler that India has produced. Certainly, I am not talking in terms of the sheer number of wickets that he has taken, but I am the kind of impact he has for whatever number of wickets  he has taken in the games he has participated.

Now you are talking about five all time greats or for that matter few of them nearly all-time greats in one team in an era when the Australian team is on steady decline. No other team that participated in 2011 World Cup had as many number of all-time greats or for that matter match winner as India had, may be save South Africa, which certainly was the second best team in the tournament.

The very special facet of this Indian team is the history they made by winning at home. No other team in the history of the One Day Cricket World Cup has won a World Cup tournament while hosting it. Then the pressure was huge on the Indian team

You just cannot imagine what kind of pressure that this Indian team was under. Every News Channel was cheering for them from the time when there was a month to go for the start of the tournament.

There was additional pressure for winning it for Sachin Tendulkar because all the claims to his greatness would have taken a beating if he did not have a single World Cup to his name despite participating in most number of World Cup tournaments, a record he shares with Javed Miandad. In fact this Indian team would have won the World Cup even without Sachin Tendulkar.

Australia and Pakistan lost the games that they had virtually won by their own mistakes. Sri Lanka too could not capitalize on the luck they had to march to the Final of the World Cup as they got easy opponents in Quarter-Final and Semi-Final and then in the Final they won the toss and had the opportunity to bat first in a high pressure game with greater amount of pressure being on India. If Sri Lanka could not win the World Cup despite all the luck, they actually did not deserve the World Cup.

I still think Pakistan was the worthy of a spot in the Final. In fact Pakistan played the best cricket throughout the tournament and a few miscalculated decisions cost them the World Cup. Had Pakistan realized under how much pressure Indian team was, they would have easily won against India.

Kudos to the Indian team members, especially Yuvraj Singh, Zaheer Khan, Dhoni, and Gambhir who held their nerves at the crucial moments of the game. If we had a couple of more bowlers even of the caliber of Zaheer  Khan, this Indian team would have ranked right up there with the all-time great teams.