In the end, the West Indies made the elimination of India from the Twenty20 cricket world championship look easy. A four and a six in the final over settled matters with a ball or two to spare. And this came after the West Indies' main hope to chase down a daunting target, the flamboyant opening batsman Chris Gayle, fell very early in the innings, followed shortly by Marlon Samuels, the hero of the West Indies' defeat of South Africa earlier in the week. When the visitors were at 19 runs for the loss of two wickets early in their chase, with 193 to get to face England at Eden Gardens on Sunday - and Gayle and Samuels back in the pavilion - it had not looked easy at all. But, in the end, the less-regarded members of the Caribbean squad - Lendl Simmons, Johnson Charles and Andre Russell - cleared the boundaries of Mumbai's Wankhede Stadium repeatedly, and made the target with seven wickets to spare. They were helped, of course, by two no-balls from Ravichandran Ashwin and Hardik Pandya, each of which gave Simmons a life. The jokes about Lendl Simmons' 82 runs off 51 balls were bitter - never before, it was being said, had a Lendl done as well on grass.
The last over, with that four and that six, was bowled by India's in-form man Virat Kohli - a man who was, perhaps unwisely, being compared to Sachin Tendulkar a little earlier in the tournament. But Kohli failed to repeat Tendulkar's last-over heroics in the late 1990s. If Kohli is being compared to Tendulkar, then perhaps it is more a testament to the Indian team's dependence on one man - a repetition of a problem that India faced all too often a decade and more ago. Such dependence is deeply unwise. Kohli certainly hit a cracking 89 runs off 47 balls in the match against the West Indies, but cricket is, in the end, a team game. As West Indian captain Darren Sammy dryly declared before the match, mocking India's over-dependence on Kohli, his team consisted of "15 match-winners" - and so it proved. Indian cricket fans, who had been rewarded by two nail-biting victories against Bangladesh and against Australia, were left contemplating whether faith in a couple of players - primarily Kohli and that master finisher, the Indian captain - is sustainable.
Even for a world-beating team like India, a recognition of its weaknesses - in short, a bit of humility - would be welcome. It did not pay to underestimate the West Indies, just like India almost suffered for underestimating Bangladesh. The image of the Indian team as "nice guys" has vanished over the past couple of years, and a cool arrogance may have something to do with it. Unfortunately, Mahendra Singh Dhoni - whose captaincy continues to irritate and impress fans in equal measure - seems to be dealing with pressure of his own. In a very odd sequence at the press conference after the match, he attacked an Australian journalist who asked him a reasonable question: having achieved so much, what was his thinking on retirement? Dhoni called the journalist up to the dais and made him answer questions: did the journalist think that Dhoni was unfit? That he would not survive till the next World Cup? But the truth is that these are not the questions the journalist, and others, were asking. They were asking at what point Dhoni himself would feel like standing aside, even if he felt he had more years left in him. After all, his retirement from Test cricket came as a surprise to everyone. Legends who hang on too long have been the curse of Indian cricket, and Dhoni - a famously cool customer - should know better than to lose his composure over the question.
But either way, the cricketing world had much to celebrate in West Indies' win. The team has made a point of celebrating with the "champions" dance, as shown in the leaked video footage of them in their hotel after the semi-final. Yet that consummate sportsman Chris Gayle also did the same dance with his Afghan counterparts after losing to them in the group stage. Indeed, Afghanistan's coming of age as a cricketing nation has been the story of the tournament. As the Afghan captain said, they were tired of winning only hearts, and wanted to win a game or two, too. Perhaps India should focus on both aims as well.
