The Dilemma of Perfection

When India won its 10th consecutive match at the Cricket World Cup, I was elated by the performance of the team but it also made me nervous that we should not lose from here especially not in the final against Australia, whom we did beat comfortably in the 1st match of the tournament but the stakes were not the same back then.

The idea of being perfect kind of works against you in the long run because it's you vs you all the time and if the standard is perfection and you have to deliver perfection every time, it will eventually take a toll on you both mentally and physically.

Not to downplay the efforts of our Men in Blue as they have been phenomenal throughout the tourney but it brings back the ghosts of 2003,2015,2019 where we also played almost flawless cricket but were not able to deliver in the clutch moments of the knockout games.

This will be a direct rematch of the 2003 Cricket World Cup final our young and hungry Indian Cricket Team knocked on the doors of cricket greatness only to be humbled by the formidable Aussies in the sweltering heat of Johannesburg.

Coming back to the point of how being too good can also be a problem we can look at the Indian cricket team's performance lately in the ICC tournaments where we have not lifted a trophy since 2013 when the great MS Dhoni led the team to a champions trophy to complete the trophy collection. Our team has never lacked talent as our country has continuously provided quality cricket players since the late 80s

However, even after all the talents in the world and domination in domestic matches, our team falters in the final moments of important matches, is it the weight of expectations of 1.4 billion people? or the weight of history where the winning team of 1983 aka Kapil Dev and 2011 aka Dhoni looks at you and you can't look them in the eye?

Rohit Sharma has been an excellent captain in the tournament so far be it with the bat or his decision making but we cannot forget the fact that we have already lost to this Australian team this in June in the Test Championship Finals in England.

The losses teach us more than the wins and I think we have had enough losing experiences in the past few tournaments that we can learn from our mistakes and get the job done this time for good.

Whatever happens on Sunday in Ahmedabad, our boys have to bury the ghosts of the past and bring home glory after a decade of wait.

Let's go boys!