I've had a day to think about it, now, and some things seem clearer. Long, final, essay incoming - more for my thoughts than the caf's consumption.
One, captaincy.
In high-pressure knockouts, good captains win you games more often than individually good players. The 03/07 Aussie dominance was not just because they had good players, but a great captain in Ponting. India won the WC in '11 due to Dhoni's captaincy more than his batting - which also explains why CSK win the IPL so often despite not having the best players. In this final, Pat Cummins was a much better, calmer, and aggressive captain who prepared thoroughly for the conditions, and believed in every player in his team to do their job. Man for man, India had better players - Rohit, Kohli, Shami and Bumrah are miles above most counterparts in most teams across multiple eras. But Rohit failed as a captain in that final, while Cummins succeeded.
- With their arguable influence over pitch selection, India was practically starting with an (unfair) advantage most games. But the pitch curators for this final outsmarted themselves and the Indian captain. If Rohit indeed wanted to bat first on this pitch (he's been historically candid in that call), it means that Cummins and the Australians read it better than the Indians. The better captain made the better call - to bowl first. And it paid off beautifully, with the demons in the pitch killing off any chance of a late Indian counterattack, and the dew making it a better surface to chase on.
- At no point was Rahul explicitly told to up his scoring, which was our biggest failure in the first innings. The singles and twos (and the occasional bad ball to put away) were up for grabs when Cummins was getting rid of all his part-timers after Iyer's wicket. Rahul went into a shell and refused to rotate strike the way Kohli was at the other end. Throughout this tournament. Indian batters have had fixed roles - since Kohli was anchoring and rotating strike better, Rahul needed to go for it. Rahul didn't - crumbling under pressure and deciding to block most balls and prioritize survival at the cost of everything, and Rohit did NOT send a message across to change this and enforce his role.
- When SKY came out to bat, his instructions should have been explicit as well - get some runs on board. I will be haunted by the image of SKY taking a single off the first ball of his over to get Kuldeep on strike when we had 3 overs and 2 wickets remaining. Unless SKY explicitly shirked responsibility there, not instructing otherwise was on Rohit. Take initiative, tell SKY what is expected of him. If you chose not to do so, then it's on you for not getting enough runs on board. Both Rahul and SKY must be shown how the third boundary after the tenth over was hit by Shami, and how easy he made it look. Why were our batters not showing intent?
- In the bowling, and this is the most serious of all his shortcomings, I feel - Rohit panicked and messed up the bowling order leaving two of his bowlers clueless. Shami had never opened bowling with Bumrah the whole tournament, and the sole reason Siraj is in the team is because he is a opening swing bowler. If you pick him, you trust him. Using up five of Shami's overs in the first 10 at such expense where he struggled to find line and length with a swinging ball, and got only one wicket - not only nullified Siraj's only strength, but also left India without a wicket taker in the middle overs. It was an all or nothing gamble, and it didn't pay. Both Shami and Siraj suffered for that decision.
- After the first 10, Rohit did not turn the screws. There was no aggression in field setting to strangle the twos and dare the Aussies to go over the field against our spinners, even before dew had completely set in. Why we were content with them rotating strike, I'll never know.
- I know the game was gone after a point, but watching the captain's body language drop even earlier was cruel to watch. Under Kohli, even in lost causes, we fought till the last ball, the last run. Rohit just gave up, and his team followed suit.
Contrast that with Cummins trusting his field placements, and planning traps for every batsman. With his readiness to trust his part-timers to come in and get dots in crucial moments, with the leadership that inspired each and every Aussie to fight tooth and nail for each single and to save each boundary. They believed as a team, and they had clear roles to play in their belief. Credit to Cummins and the Aussies for bringing the right mindset and turning the Indian crowd against the team and capitalizing on the Indian choke.
Two, legacy.
The legacy of this Australian team is that with much lesser players than their '03 counterparts, they played for each other and their country, left their blood, sweat and tears on the pitch, beat arguably better individual opponents time and again in extremely adversarial conditions and achieved the pinnacle of success through sheer mentality and resilience. Each player found a moment in the WC to will themselves into legend. Who else scores 200 in a WC chase with a limping leg when you're batting with the tail? Who else has the guts to bowl first on an Indian pitch in a WC final? How many 37 year olds run their lungs out to save boundary after boundary in a WC final? How many players have winning centuries in WTC and CWC finals (and in this one, after taking the most important catch of the tournament)? This team should be remembered for their resilience, for their sheer belief and application in the face of all odds.
There were questions if this Indian team was as good as the 2003 Australian team. The answer is not only a clear no, I think it must be acknowledged that this Indian team was not even as good as this Aussie team - that has won the Ashes, the WTC, and now the ODI final. We had the better players - Australia has never produced a player with Kohli's combination of sheer individual caliber, talent and resilience, for instance, and Rohit and Bumrah are right up there with Australian greats - but our team was inferior. The legacy of this Indian team is much like that of the 2003 one - individually great players, poor team that can't mentally cope with big occasions, starting with the captain. And it has to be stated how the pressure that Indians face is different than what Aussies face. It's like England at football. A billion people, myself included, have pinned their hopes on you in almost fervent religious-esque dedication. Stoinis can walk about in NY and not even get recognized, Rohit will be known as the captain who lost this WC everywhere he goes till the day he dies. Indian cricketers cannot disengage from this pressure, from this expectation, and it takes special mental resilience to go out there, shed this extra pressure and play as freely as an Australian counterpart does. I don't think we can get anywhere without acknowledging our failings in the first place, eating humble pie, and aiming to fix our shortcomings in the generations to come.
There is no redemption for many of the folks who stepped out onto the pitch yesterday - this was it, and they bungled it. I'd like to be kind to the likes of Bumrah, Shami, Jadeja, Rohit, and Kohli for all the joy they brought to the country across the last decade and longer - we had some brilliant wins in some challenging conditions across all formats of the game, and should have won more finals for the talent they had. And of course they have their individual honours - Kohli as the greatest ODI batsman India has ever produced, Bumrah as the bowler, and Shami as our best WC bowler. But they'll have to live with this failure for the rest of their lives. Sometimes it just doesn't go your way, and you live with it.
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Roll on the meaningless bilaterals, Asia Cups, IPLs. None of those matter to me personally (and to millions of other Indians, I presume) after losing this single game, unfortunately. I was personally deeply invested in this tournament to ease the ghosts of 2003, and ended up doubling them. I have enough trauma from intensely supporting United, a step back there did wonders for me. It's a shame I'd be giving up on watching Kohli bat or Bumrah bowl, but it's time to give up on cricket for a good few years to preserve mental health, till we finally have a better team and a better captain a decade or so later. Perhaps it will be good for the game to have attention taken away from India and the swathes of fans (quite a few are toxic, as Neesham's inbox shows), or perhaps it'll be open season for English trolls (because Aussies or Pak fans don't gloat as much) to capitalize on India's failure. I'll never know.