The 1999 World Cup was special for me because it was my debut. The experience of playing and getting ready for a World Cup was obviously different from other forms of the game. So from that point of view it was different and I still remember landing in England in early summer which was cold. The World Cup was held pretty early in May.
We got ready by playing four to five preparatory matches before the first game against South Africa.I really did well in the first match but was unfortunate to miss out on a hundred as I was run out for 97! Then the other good memory was the 183 I scored and the big partnership I had with Rahul (Dravid) against Sri Lanka at Taunton which was an important game.
We had to win two games back to back. One was the Taunton game against Sri Lanka and the other at Birmingham against England. We did win and I was extremely happy to be an important performer in both the games, for I won the Man-of-the-Match awards in both to take India into the Super Six.
That we did not go further than Super Six was a bit of a disappointment. We did beat Pakistan in the Super Six which was an important game for me to win. It was very good on the personal side. We did have a team to go further in the championship but unfortunately we did not progress further. These were quite a bit of memories of that World Cup for someone who made his debut in 1996 and playing his first World Cup and doing well.
I returned home a confident player. This helped me perform well for India in the next few years. Pakistan did better than us although it lost to us in the Super Six. It generally did well to qualify for the semifinals and outplayed New Zealand in the last four but lost to a very good side in Australia in the final. Pakistan's target of 132 at Lord's was never a problem for Australia, which won by eight wickets. In fact, Australia was in deep trouble chasing South Africa's 271 in a crucial Super Six game and was 50 for three at Headingley when Steve Waugh got a fantastic hundred. Steve's innings was so special.
The catch Herschelle Gibbs dropped off Steve at mid-wicket was crucial. There were still other opportunities to get Steve out and from there to win the game by five wickets was fantastic! Even the semifinal game between the top two sides of the World Cup was a tie! That South African team was a very good one and batted really deep. Australia batted first at Birmingham and got 213. South Africa was cruising and was threatening to take the game away. Suddenly it lost wickets and the run-out tied the game. Still I think South Africa should have got 213.
From the Indian point of view, we messed up during important situations. We should have won the game against Zimbabwe and carried the points into Super Six. That hurt us more than anything. Had we carried the points and beaten Pakistan in the Super Six, India could have entered the semifinals. The loss to Zimbabwe took the semifinal berth away from us.
(S. Sabanayakan in conversation with Sourav Ganguly)
0 comments:
Post a Comment