Long after Jasprit Bumrah had finished his rare match-eve spell at Eden Gardens nets, he emerged from the dressing room only to connect with the motley gathering of spectators who had converged near the B block.
The fast bowler agreed to demands for selfies and autographs, much to the delight of the lucky few. A while later, Suryakumar Yadav too adhered to a similar request.
Twenty-four hours before what is a make-or-break match for India in the T20 World Cup, there was an inevitable attempt to stay tuned to what mental conditioning coach Paddy Upton had called the “Al Pacino moment” ahead of the 2011 World Cup final. In his concluding team talk, Upton, with a calm conviction, had compared the occasion to a Bollywood movie. “We know what our scripts are... We have the best actors. We are completely prepared for our roles. We only need to go out and perform those roles,” Upton had assured Dhoni’s team.
Sunday’s final Super Eight match is no title decider but will determine India’s survival in the tournament.
Gautam Gambhir, who had been inspired by Upton’s words, knows well that Surya’s team’s “Al Pacino moment” has come a bit too early in the tournament. The circumstances will be hugely in India’s favour, but they will also have to handle the mental pressure of survival in such warfare.
Besides a capacity crowd, there will also be the BCCI and ICC bigwigs in attendance — ICC chair Jay Shah is expected to be present along with BCCI president Mithun Manhas and secretary Devajit Saikia.
A compilation of slides by the team’s video analyst Hari Prasad Mohan worked wonders ahead of their last match against Zimbabwe in Chennai. Moments from Abhishek Sharma, Hardik Pandya, Surya, Sanju Samson and Tilak Varma’s successful exploits were threaded through inspirational songs.
It worked like magic as they shed their inhibitions, which prevented them from faltering. The slashes which often resulted in snicks vanished as the likes of Abhishek and Tilak suddenly seemed to have reinvented their touch and found everything in their swinging arc.
“I think the important thing is to focus on ourselves, focus on what has got this group to this point, how well they’ve done,” assistant coach Ryan Ten Doeschate echoed the sentiments on Saturday.
Not since the 1996 World Cup semi-final against Sri Lanka has India faced such a knockout match in an ICC tournament at Eden Gardens.
Shai Hope’s team will once again try to exploit India’s weakness against off-spin, though reverting to the Abhishek-Samson opening combination had forced Zimbabwe to abandon their strategy of opening with a spinner.
Roston Chase could be West Indies’ best bet as he has the ability to take the ball away from the left-handers and India have plenty in their line-up. India have lost 20 wickets to spin in this edition, with 13 of them falling to off-spin.
This will also be a contest of two of the most powerful six-hitting teams in the tournament — India have smashed 63 to the West Indies’ 66.
“We feel the West Indies play a risk-reward game of high proportion. So as a bowling unit, we are really looking forward to that challenge,” Ten Doeschate said.
Will it be a David versus Goliath affair? “...Let me tell you, all my soldiers are ready to take down Goliath tomorrow,” West Indies coach Daren Sammy said.
But will Hope’s men be able to break their drought of victories at Eden Gardens in the shortest format?
