Follow live updates and highlights of the final of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 between India and Australia at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.
Lay out the carpet, bring out the trumpet - Australia are ODI World champions for the SIXTH time!
It might sound like an overused term but there's nothing that describes tonight's Australian performance more than the term 'clinical'. They were up against the best team of the tournament and 1,30,000 people mocking and jeering them at every slip-up. Except, Australia barely had any slip-ups. Cummins was expectedly asked about the daunting task of playing in front of cauldron like this, and on hindsight, may have uttered words you could immortalize. The crowd's obviously going to be very one-sided but it's also in sport there's nothing more satisfying than hearing a big crowd go silent and that's the aim for us tomorrow.
"The crowd's obviously going to be very one-sided but it's also in sport there's nothing more satisfying than hearing a big crowd go silent and that's the aim for us."
Australian players took that so seriously that they didn't even have a full capacity crowd to silence by midway through the chase. Everything that could work well, did for Cummins's side, including his own incredible bowling where he didn't concede a boundary. Beyond the PowerPlay, boundaries dried up so badly for India that it kick-started their downfall in the game. Between overs 11 to 40, India scored just two fours. Their total of 240 was slightly under-par, but Australia were further helped by the onset of dew, which was anticipated anyway. Travis Head, saw past the early trouble that Bumrah caused, flirting with the outside edge of his bat, to score a sensational century. In the space of six months, he's now got hundreds against India in two ICC finals (WTC final in June). Australia just channelled their big game energy and unleashed it on an Indian team that has been the best in the World Cup by a margin. This is just how cruel knockout sport can be, as Rohit Sharma and co. realise today.
They were spot on with all their plans through the tournament. They aced challenges batting first, they pulled off big chases. They found a way around a big injury and had a back-up seamer light up the tournament. On the grandest stage of all, however, the batting came unstuck even as Rohit gave them yet another big start. The batting through the middle-overs stagnated and it came back to haunt them. India still made a great start with the ball, tails up, crowd bouncing and three wicket in tow by the seventh over. It's going to take a while to get over this World Cup final defeat.
We'll leave you with this incredible narrative: Australia started their World Cup with defeats to India and South Africa, went to the bottom of the points table, won seven straight games to reach the semis and then beat the same two sides - South Africa and India - to win the crown!
