A billion dreams come true

Their batsmen had posted a decent total of 274 but even though Malinga delivered two big scalps they could not drive the advantage home. Muttiah Muralitharan, who had struggled through recent matches, looked unfit and struggled with a wet ball in the dew. He bowled too short and was punished, and the back-up seam bowling was feeble.

India’s victory will be all the sweeter for it coming without a major score from Sachin Tendulkar or Virender Sehwag. In the past they might have wobbled but the middle order looked solid as it produced stands of 83, 109 and 54. The way Gautam Gambhir, Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh batted showed a self-assurance that had not been so evident when collapsing against England, South Africa and West Indies in the group stage.

Pre-match attention had been lavished on Murali and Tendulkar but it was another modern-day master, Mahela Jayawardene, who set up the game. Without a single violent shot he swept to an 84-ball hundred — the sixth in a World Cup final — with all the serenity of a Maharajah’s gold-plated Rolls-Royce. He flicked and feathered 67 of his first 100 runs behind point and square leg — death by what must have seemed to India’s bowlers like 1,000 cuts.

And without Jayawardene, Sri Lanka would surely have been lost. With the gifted allrounder Angelo Mathews injured, Sri Lanka’s tail looked shakier than ever — they made four changes in an attempt to re-balance the side — and at 182 for five it was easy to see the innings subsiding into inadequacy.

Led by the vibrancy of Zaheer Khan, determined to make up for his abject start in the 2003 final, India had started strongly, bowling straight and fielding like they were members of an acrobatic troupe.

Kumar Sangakkara batted beautifully but fell to his first ill-judged shot, carving at a wide ball when two short of his half-century. Jayawardene committed no such faux pax.

The match turned in Sri Lanka’s last 10 overs, which brought 91 runs. Nuwan Kulasekara, who survived a speculative India review for caught behind, contributed a feisty 32 from 30 balls that included a mighty six over midwicket off Zaheer measuring 87 metres. When he was run out, Thisara Perera took over, plundering 17 of the 18 that came off the 50th over, six of them off the final ball.

Zaheer was again the bowler on the receiving end. His last two overs cost 35, which for a bowler who has taken most of his wickets after the 30th over, must have come as something of a shock. For all that, his dismissal of Chamara Kapugedera with a clever slower ball gave him 21 wickets for the tournament, putting him joint top with Shahid Afridi.

This was one of the best matches of a tournament short on high-quality drama — England’s matches apart. Despite that, the hopes of the minnows not to be cut out from future World Cups may be rewarded. The ICC is meeting tomorrow and will discuss whether to rescind the plan to cut the number of teams from 14 to 10, and go for 12 instead, which would be a typically mealy-mouthed compromise to ensure future lopsided contests.

Not that the quality of the cricket ever has much to do with watching habits in India. Cricket represents money and big tournaments held on India soil, and with the home side doing well, represent very big money. Attending games in person in modernised stadiums was a great experience — far better than the Caribbean in 2007 — but watching on TV is almost impossible, so relentless are the commercials that are jammed between every over and run around the borders of the screen whenever a four is hit.

During the first 15 overs of the India-Pakistan semi-final, about 60 adverts were shown and brought in an estimated £1.5m in revenue. Rates were of course much higher for the final — for which the global audience was put at in excess of one billion — with sources suggesting 10-second slots were selling for £42,000 a time.

On surfaces with all the life of feather duvets, bowling sides have struggled to make early inroads and even Sri Lanka, feted in some quarters as possessing the strongest attack in the tournament, have found the going hard. Before yesterday, Malinga had claimed just one wicket inside the first 20 overs, which only made his double-strike all the more remarkable. Removing Sehwag and Tendulkar in your opening spell is a bit like winning the lottery two weekends in a row.

So much hope is invested in both of them — especially Tendulkar playing in his home city and chasing his 100th hundred for India — that when they went, it was hard to remember who was left who might finish the job.

Sehwag fell leg-before second ball, attempting to play across the line as he often does. That Sehwag opted to challenge such a stone-dead decision (as he had in the semi-final) spoke less well of India’s team ethic.

Tendulkar shaped immaculately but his relatively poor record batting second in one-dayers after he has already been required to field for 50 overs betrays the toll that 20 years of playing has taken. He has scored a match-winning hundred in a one-day chase only once in 10 years, so the idea that he could do it here was fanciful.

But if Tendulkar cursed himself on his quiet walk back to the pavilion thinking he had lost his nation the World Cup, he might have thought again. The Sri Lankans clearly thought they had won it.

It took them a while to wake up again and by the time they did Gambhir had been put down on 30 by Kulasekara in the deep. Tillakaratne Dilshan took a stunning catch off his own bowling to break a 83-run stand between Gambhir and Kohli. It gave Sri Lanka hope but a billion dreamers would not be denied.

Go to the next page for the full scorecard from the final