Mohammed Siraj Powers India to Their 8th Asia Cup Title!

Powered by an incredible surge of the rising Indian fast bowler Mohammed Siraj India have crushed Sri Lanka by 10 wickets in the Asia Cup-2023 Final played in Colombo today, winning their 8^th title of the tournament, followed by Sri Lanka with 5 and Pakistan with 2 title wins. The hosts won the toss and as expected chose to bat first. So far in the tournament, all matches were won by teams batting first; however, in the Final today things took a different turn. The match was also delayed by rainy weather and the Indian pacers smelt some swing in the pitch of which they took full advantage. After Jasprit Bumrah removed Kusal Perera in the very first over of the match, Mohammed Siraj achieved the rarest of rare feats by taking four scalps in just one over or in just six balls—his second and only the fourth over of the match. Four wickets in the Lankan top order reducing the hosts to a sorry 12/5. And the slide did not stop there. Siraj fired on to his fifer in just 16 balls and then to 6/21 overall. Pandya delivered the final blows for his 3/3 figure bundling out the Lankas for just 50 runs—their second lowest total ever in ODI cricket. It was all over for Sri Lanka in 15.2 overs and India looked at the target of 51 runs in 50 overs which they did achieve in style—openers Ishan Kishan and Shubman Gill hauling it up in 6.1 overs.

Mohammed Siraj becomes the first ever Indian bowler to capture 4 wickets in 6 balls and the third in ODI cricket history. Incidentally, the first two cricketers to have achieved this are both from Sri Lanka: Chaminda Vaas against Bangladesh in the 2003 World Cup and Lasith Malinga in the World Cup-2007 against South Africa. But I think Siraj’s feat should be judged as the best ever from two standpoints: first, it was the Final of an international tournament, and second, he initiated the damage in the very top order of the team, never relenting till the finish. We talked about India’s rarest of rare kind of feat in the Super-4 match against Pakistan earlier: whereas it was an incredible display of Indian batting in that match, in the Final today it was an incredible display of fast bowling.

Team India is immensely capable of such feats whenever its immensely talented cricketers play to their true potential, and this point naturally brings up the most crucial point about the constitution of the team: when you do have your best team at any juncture, why don’t you allow it to go on playing and winning! Why, like in numerous other occasions in Indian cricket history, did you need to change the team in the match against Bangladesh? Why your players needed to be given rest in the midst of an important tournament and that too in the run-up to the ODI World Cup-2023? You still experimented just because your team had already reached the Final and thus let your team lose unnecessarily. Why do you have such repeated urges to lose? A win against Bangladesh would perhaps have further pushed India up in the ICC ODI rankings. Was it not better even otherwise to prepare for the World Cup with the maximum possible wins? And, had either Tilak or Prasidh or the perplexingly axed and demoralized Shami and Suryakumar or the enigma Shardul played the matches of their life would you have selected them for the Final? If not, obviously, then why was that experiment necessary? For accomplishing a consistently performing team you must stick to the best team available and you must be ready to drop any player in any position if out of form or just non-performing for which, luckily, you do have plenty of options.

Now, for the Final of an intensely competitive tournament in its two stages the final match was a perfect anti-climax—a real letdown for the thousand of enthusiastic cricket fans. Again, for a tournament that’d been dominated by the spinners all the way the Final was entirely on a different footing with the spinners not getting a chance even to bowl a few overs, forget about taking wickets. Although for the Indian fans the Final proved to be a huge relief of sorts the Sri Lanka fans and genuine cricket lovers were thoroughly frustrated, a 100-over match getting over in only about 22 overs. However, cricket has always been the game of glorious uncertainties and such things do happen and will continue to happen. And star performers like Siraj will also continue to dazzle us.