T20 World Cup 2024 : India Versus South Africa Final One For The Ages

There is a lot of excitement in Barbados ahead of the all-important final of the ongoing T20 World Cup 2024 featuring India and South Africa. The Men in Blue would be keen to end their ICC Trophy drought, while the Aiden Markaram side will also be eager to lay their hands on the Trophy. Writes Meenakshi Rao

Barbados:As the very Bajan saying goes, this one ain't have no backdoor – the Big Final, two undefeated teams. One thirsting for a Cup for 17 years. The other in a forever kind of labour pain to somehow give birth to an era. One faultless, dogged, gritty, ambitious, clinical and top of-the world. The other in a flurry over the moment, desperate for gain and fearful despite being fearsome.

Indeed, there will be no second chances here for either of the leaders. When India meet South Africa at the Kensington Oval on Saturday, it will be a Final for the ages. Rohit Sharma and Team India have reached this frontier by serenading difficult constructs, achieving targets, weathering adversities, kissing fortune, and sporting an infectious sense of searing self-belief.

This self-belief that India will win has infected the moment – the fans who have put hotel reservations on hold and sold mode, some who have hired charters in the absence of flights at whopping costs, others who are begging for tickets despite brimming USD pockets, and yet others, willing to literally swim across the Atlantic from Guyana to somehow reach the Kensington Oval to cheer for India.

And, of course, the sea around which is all set to rise in turbulent ovation with a tropical storm gathering up over Barbados, but that’s only post-match.

India’s job is to weather this tidal wave of expectation and play their best cricket thus far. They have the skill, the ability, and the intent. Sharma believes, he also has a smart cricket team. What they don't have is a window for loss this Saturday, up against a team that is formidable but not entirely edgy.

Sharma, who played an inning of his life in the altered reality of giving preservation preference over pyrotechnics in the semifinal, has lived through a hectic schedule with his band of warriors, island hopping on midnight charters carrying a sleepy daughter on his shoulder, getting into war-room meetings immediately after, setting targets and strategies for individuals, talking to the boys to maintain the momentum and the calm, working on his own bat and breaking down privately, but that only after avenging a past humiliation, the one against England in Adelaide, 2022.

This will be the last World Cup for him and many others in his team – Coach Rahul Dravid, Virat Kohli who is slated for a big one and Ravindra Jadeja, to name a few. A swan song, thus, has a 100 per cent chance of visitation on game day.

The technicals for this venue are all sorted – the pitch is for batters when it bounces, and for bowlers when it does not, a wicket on which a Kuldeep Yadav-enabled India defeated Afghanistan scoring 181 runs.

It is a historic venue for a historic moment, and Sharma has the wherewithal to give himself that room, casually glance over his shoulder, put the weight on his front foot and pull that big one into the history books through the extra cover of a sorted team pitching in.

So all, 8pm, India Time will be India time in every sense because, sorry South Africa, this time is for India, waka waka ho!