India win T20 World Cup as SKY falls in on Rainbow Nation

India's Suryakumar Yadav makes a catch to dismiss South Africa's David Miller during the ICC men's Twenty20 World Cup 2024 final cricket match between India and South Africa at Kensington Oval in Bridgetown, Barbados, on June 29, 2024. (Photo by Chandan KHANNA / AFP) / ALTERNATE CROP

Ian Bishop went early. You could tell he wanted people to remember the phrase.

“Is this the day the Rainbow Nation find the pot of gold at the end?” he asked on commentary.

It was still only the 15th over. Maybe it was because it was his last over before he made way for commentators from the two competing teams, as is custom, to oversee the winning moment.

But the end felt nigh. It was raining sixes at the time. Heinrich Klaasen had just savaged Axar Patel, one of India’s players of the tournament, taking him for 24 off the over.

It was all over. South Africa were heading for their first major title in senior men’s cricket.

All they needed was a run a ball from the last five overs, with six wickets left and Klaasen and David Miller at the crease. They even got through another box-office Jasprit Bumrah over intact.

And then the SKY caved in on the Rainbow Nation.

First, Klaasen chased a wide one from Hardik Pandya that caught the edge and Rishabh Pant caught him at the wicket.

Bumrah then embossed his status as surely T20 international cricket’s greatest fast bowler with an extraordinary 18th over that went for just two and brought the wicket of Marco Jansen.

Arshdeep Singh reinforced the momentum swing with a thrifty 19th over.

All of which meant South Africa now needed 16 off the last six balls. The tension was asphyxiating. The drama had been unbearable. And it still had not reached its crescendo yet.

Miller was on strike to face Pandya. He had been there before, at least in T20 cricket, and had got the job done from similar positions umpteen times.

Pandya’s delivery was in the arc. Miller tried to put it out the park. Then Suryakumar Yadav, known to so many as SKY, running around the boundary from long off, pulled off a catch for the ages.

Speeding around the edge, he held the catch, jumped over the boundary sponge, released the ball as he was doing so, gathered himself, and jumped back inside the rope to complete the catch.

Yes, it’s been done before. But with the stakes this high? Never before had anyone seen anything like it.

“That is the best piece of fielding I’ve ever seen in a game of cricket,” Ian Smith said on commentary of SKY’s effort, before labelling it “one of the great catches in cricket history.”

It was the moment that decided it once and for all. Pandya closed out the remainder, and India were winners of the T20 World Cup for the second time, shading an all-time classic by seven runs.

All over field India’s players fell to the grass. Pandya was in tears when victory was sealed, and had to wipe them away while speaking in his flash interview straight after.

As if there was not enough emotion flying around, Virat Kohli then decided this was the moment to confirm an “open secret” that he was retiring from T20 internationals.

He did so while accepting his award as player of the match for the final. The opener had shaken off a tournament of struggle by posting the highest score of the game.

It was not classic Kohli, but it was decisive, helping India quell an early wobble when they lost three quick wickets.

“This was my last T20 World Cup, and this was exactly what we wanted to achieve,” Kohli said.

“This was an amazing game. I was telling Rohit [Sharma] when we went out to bat that some days you don’t feel like you can score a run, and you come out and things happen.

“God is great. I hold my head in gratitude and I am just grateful I could get the job done on the day that it mattered the most.”

Kohli signed off his career with 76 from 59 balls, and said it had been “now or never” after the start India had had.

“I knew it was my last T20 game for India in the last T20 World Cup I was going to play. I wanted to make the most of it, and this was our aim.

“We wanted to win an ICC tournament, and it was the occasion which helped me put my head down and respect the situation, and play the game my team needed me to play.

“This was an open secret. It was not something I wasn’t going to announce, even if we had lost. It is time for the next generation to step up and take India forward.”