Not in the stars

is another World Cup connection that makes the Twenty20 final so meaningful of the subcontinent. The Indian and Pakistan teams were broken in so many ways by their humiliating exit early in this year’s World Cup in the West Indies. This week they return home changed purely by performance.

This is why it is so important that India and Pakistan got to the final the hard way. They were the only two teams in the tournament this month that came to South Africa depleted from their normal one-day squads. In this long half-year, they have clearly found the reserves to recoup. There is, of course, the induction of youth and athleticism, so evidently needed in the new quickened version of the game. But the difference between the West Indies and South Africa, for both, was also clinched by the absence of stars. M.S. Dhoni embodied this new privileging of utility over reputation so neatly when he explained why he gave Joginder Sharma the last, difficult over to bowl against Pakistan: Harbhajan Singh was not fully confident, he said, Sharma was keen for a chance. In a larger way, Dhoni’s team did not carry men with big and wonderful reputations — he was at liberty to choose the playing eleven purely on each one’s ability to deliver on the day.

It is not just that the stars will return to the squads in coming days. The very fact of victories in Twenty20 have created new stars among the youngsters. If an awe for reputations is rekindled, the lessons of this lovely fortnight would be lost.