Look away Indian fans! The content below may not be meant for the soft-hearted, as cricket celebrates the 1 year anniversary of arguably the biggest heartbreak in the history of the Indian Cricket Team (ICT).
The date is November 19, fondly remembered by Australians as yet another ODI World Cup winning date, but not so by the Indian fans, as this date will haunt them for a very long time.
On this day, in 2023, the greatest-ever white-ball side of Indian Cricket took on the Mighty Aussies in the ICC ODI World Cup 2023 Final at Ahmedabad.
Australia are always known to be the hot-favourites whenever they walk-in to an ICC tournament, but that was not the case during the final, as Rohit Sharma’s Indian team was putting on arguably the most dominant performance by a nation in the entire history of ICC Cricket World Cups.
Starting their tournament with a win over Australia at Chepauk in Chennai on October 8, 2023, team Indian never looked back and thumped the likes of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, New Zealand, England, Sri Lanka, South Africa, and Netherlands in their group stage matches to finish on top of the table with 9 wins out of 9 matches.
The playing XI spoke volumes of India’s dominance in the entire tournament, as the side contained match-winners after match-winners for any given situation.
A blistering opening pair, added with the likes of highly-consistent Virat Kohli and KL Rahul, followed by Shreyas Iyer, Suryakumar Yadav, and Ravindra Jadeja highlighted India’s dominance with the bat.
With the ball, the hosts were a league apart from rest of the sides, as Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammad Shami, Mohammad Siraj, and talisman Jasprit Bumrah rattled the opposition sides by running through their batting order, thereby, registering record-victories over the likes of Sri Lanka and South Africa.
A World Cup win seemed like a destiny about to be fulfilled, but every perfect run endures one dismal day, which unfortunately, came in the Final of the tournament.
Australia started their tournament with defeats to India and South Africa, and were languishing at the bottom half of the table.
Social media users started making fun of the record-time World Cup winners, but what followed later will go down in history as the greatest comeback ever by a side in ICC Cricket World Cups.
Australia’s group-stage journey was no short of a brilliant script written by the gods of cricket, as it consisted of iconic innings, grit, determination, and never-say-die spirit.
Australia were languishing at 92/7, in their chase of 291 against Afghanistan. The Asian side were within touching distance of a memorable victory, but what followed later changed the entire complexion of the tournament.
Glenn Maxwell and Pat Cummins combined for arguably the most iconic partnership in the history of cricket, as the duo defied the odds by registering a 200-run+ stand, which included the unbeaten 201 knock of the veteran Number 32 of Australia.
Australia redeemed themselves against the sides that handed them the defeat in the initial stages of the tournament, by defeating South Africa (semi-final 2) and India (Final) to win their record-6th ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup.
