T20 World Cup: Before SKY’s scraper, there was Kapil’s back-waltz, Sreesanth’s flapping clasp
Kapil Dev waltzed back; Sreesanth backtracked a couple of steps, and waited for the ball to drop into his flapping hands, and Suryakumar Yadav rushed to his left skimming the boundary ropes - and the nation held their breath for a few seconds that stretched inexorably. In 1983, for Kapil, they waited for 9 confidently-hopeful seconds; in 2007, for Sreesanth they fretted for 4 nervy seconds; and in 2024, for Surya, they dropped their jaws for 7 clueless seconds without knowing what to expect for the danger that encircled him was multifold.
Kapil yanking his head behind his left shoulder, Sreesanth staring into the skies, and Suryakumar’s eyes fixated on the ball even as his feet were tiptoeing the skirting of the ropes would go down as three great visuals from the Indian limited-overs flip book of memories.
Kapil Dev remains India’s most supreme natural athlete to have ever played the game - he didn’t run; he waltzed, he didn’t catch; he serenely pouched blurs. Sreesanth remains the most enigmatic talented Indian cricketer, an emotionally-vulnerable man almost fatally attracted to self-destruction. He catches, but it induces even atheists to contemplate praying. Suryakumar, a modern-marvel in the way he bats and works on his fitness with a private chef often travelling on tours for him, was one of the three best placed Indians on that field, alongside Ravindra Jadeja and Virat Kohli, to even contemplate the possibility of that catch.
It’s in that contemplation that great catches achieve immortality. For Kapil to run 20 yards to grab that game-turning catch of the best batsman in the world Viv Richards wasn’t a big deal. It lies in the fact that he chose to go for it. Yashpal Sharma running in from the boundary was probably closer to it as Kris Srikkanth would once say, Kapil kept saying and gesturing pretty early in the piece that it was his. Or as the current coach Rahul Dravid once described that catch perfectly: “It was incredible that he went for it. You take a lot of that kind of catches in practice but to replicate it in the final against the opposing team’s best batsman, you can have some doubt in going for it. It was incredible that he went for it. That’s Kapil Dev.”
Kapil had no doubts. No self-doubts, nothing about the swirling wind, nothing about who the batsman was, nothing but his eye on the ball. Just before that over, as a captain he had had second doubts about giving one more over to the genial medium pacer Madan Lal, but was convinced otherwise by the bowler who said he would get Richards. A short ball outside off and Richards swivelled into his famous pull, but was pulled down by the greatest all-round cricketing talent India has ever produced. Kapil didn’t even celebrate it and would perhaps have quietly walked back if not for the fans who had charged out and Yashpal fiercely hugging him.
Sreesanth came from the opposite spectrum on that contemplation scale. Of the three, taking in account the fielder and the nature of the catch, Sreesanth’s was pretty difficult. Kapil had to run, Surya had to run and balance - and there was no time for any dangerous self-defeating doubts and the pressure of oh-god-what-if-I-drop-this thoughts to invade the headspace. Sreesanth had to cope with that as he waited for those 4 seconds to end.
From the moment Misbah-ul-Haq unwisely chose to lap a slower-ball, there was no question of anyone else taking that catch. No one else was close. Sreesanth was carefully placed there, not for a catch but to be hidden from any such eventuality. “Dhonibhai put me there I guess because he didn’t want the ball to come to me!” Sreesanth once told this newspaper with a lovely smile. “Even I wasn’t thinking about any catches; I just wanted to make sure I didn't give any extra run as there was no one behind me at short fine-leg. I think I was quite blank during that over.”
The ball wobbled up from the Pakistani’s blade and Sreesanth would in hindsight throw up a meme he read later, “Misbah forgot that there is a Malayali in every corner. Only I would change that Malayali to Indian!”. So there he stood, hands flapping away after the initial backtrack. Once at some event, Dhoni would say with a smile that when he turned and saw it was Sreesanth there, he had lost hope. It could be the sentiment shared by many Indians on that night. But the palms managed to press together and cup as the ball landed. “It popped up slightly if you remember, and I grabbed it on the second attempt.” And he would spread his hands and roar.
For 7 seconds, Suryakumar had no time to think about the end result. He had to rush at full speed, he had to somehow skirt away from the boundary and hold his balance but still have his gaze at the white round thing that was sinking down from the skies.
“It felt like the trophy was sailing over the boundary to the other side,” he would tell India Today later. Just like how a meme would capture it later, of him grabbing the world cup trophy even as he was stumbling near the ropes.
“Now it's easy to say. But at that time, it felt like a trophy was sailing over the boundary to the other side. At that moment, you don't think the ball will cross the boundary line and go for six. Whatever was in my control, I tried it. And wind was also a good factor at that moment and helped me a little bit. And we have done a lot of practice sessions with our fielding coach and taken a lot of catches like this. So when it comes to a game like this, our presence of mind is very important.”
As Dravid said of Kapil’s catch, to train for it is one thing, but to replicate it in the last over of the World Cup final to end the knock from a marauding David Miller and to put himself between himself and India’s defeat is quite something.
There were so many variables where it could have gone pear shaped. If the run wasn’t a sprint, he would never have got there. If the feet didn’t listen to his brain, he would have trampled on the boundary rope - even now many fans are sweating over zoomed-in ultra-close-up shots. If the hands were nervy, the ball would have popped out. And all this was just half the job: the run, the hand-stretch, and the dancing feet.
Unlike Kapil’s and Sreesanth’s, he couldn’t just clasp his palms over the ball and be done with it. His brain now had to work overtime to think beyond the bubbling emotions: to pop up the ball, get over the line and jump back to the legal side and catch.
The moment he did all that, the pupils of his eyes are worth a million close-up replays. Not his feet. His eyes widen into indescribable glee at what he has done. Kapil’s toothy grin flashed at Lord’s. Sreesanth’s relief-tinged growl reverberated in Durban and it’s that wide-eyed bliss of Surya at Barbados that would linger on for years. Three catches, three World Cups, and to borrow a line from the football commentator Peter Drury, sport takes human beings to places they can’t even imagine. Sometimes, just sometimes, reality beats dreams as it did on all these three occasions.
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