It was with their narrowest win that Team India earned the Champions Trophy title in England on Sunday but there was never any doubt about the team’s self-belief. An outfit of young, fresh and eager players went through the competition unbeaten to renew faith in Indian cricket, which was hit recently by the IPL spot-fixing scandal.
Team India’s commitment to winning cricket was a testament to the honesty of effort that sport is about.
Mahendra Singh Dhoni may have faced some threat of losing his job as Test captain, but his indisputable leadership skills in shorter formats have been the highlight of his remarkable career. His innovative ways at the helm helped his team keep their cool in a tense final shortened by the elements into a lottery. As the only skipper ever to have won ICC world titles in all forms of limited-overs cricket — T20 world championship in 2007, 50 overs World Cup in 2011 and now the Champions Trophy (50 overs) — Dhoni is in a league of his own.
His confidence seems to have oozed into his younger mates, like Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Dinesh Karthik among the batsmen, and all the bowlers, particularly spinners Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin. Their convincing and consistent performances mean they have justified the faith invested in them by their fans. Dhoni and his men would already have set their sights on the defence of the big World Cup in 2015. There is no reason to believe the team is not in the right hands.