After months of hell, Hardik Pandya rises again to win India the World Cup

“I said it,” was Hardik’s response. “Even with three balls left, I told the boys, ‘Even if we lose the game, it’s okay.’ I said I am proud of the way we have fought in the game. We have been a team that has worked very hard individually, together, collectively. So even if we had lost the game, I would have still had a smile on my face and would have just said we gave it everything, and they were just good on that day.

“Somewhere down the line I have accepted the fact that this sport will give me ups and downs. The more ups I have the better, but even the downs I will cherish because failure teaches you a lot of things.”

Truth be told, this is how the sport should be played. This is how you perform at your optimum. But like George Costanza in “The Deal” episode of Seinfeld, I wanted to say: “Where are you living? Are you here? Are you on this planet? It’s impossible. It can’t be done.

“Thousands of years people have been trying to have their cake and eat it too. So all of a sudden you are going to come along and do it. Where do you get the ego? No one can do it. It can’t be done.”

Quite a few have tried to seek that balance and failed. This sport just doesn’t let you. You have to care like hell but play like you don’t care. Only the greatest can attain that nirvana.

Sure enough, the injuries returned for Hardik. The only man in India who can do what he does, wasn’t able to do what he does. In the middle of a great ODI World Cup campaign last year, he hurt himself again while trying to field off his own bowling. The details are not important right now – and surely someday they will say their piece – but something happened at Mumbai Indians and suddenly nobody wanted to touch Hardik with a bargepole.

He was booed wherever he went, and a while he became sport for the crowds. The ball didn’t come out of his hand right either. Paras Mhambrey, India’s bowling coach, said the team management kept monitoring him remotely, and Hardik kept following the process: workloads, intensity, net practice. His luck was bound to turn at some point, Mhambrey said.

The game was nearly gone, but his MI team-mate Jasprit Bumrah kept it alive until Hardik’s return. He started with a wide slower ball and was lucky enough to get the edge of the dangerous Heinrich Klaasen. Then he tightened up. Cutters into the pitch. Nothing fancy. Didn’t try to reverse it like Bumrah. Kept it alive for Bumrah like Bumrah had done for him.

Bumrah and Arshdeep left Hardik plenty to defend in the 20th over. Just 14 had come off the previous four overs, along with two wickets, but David Miller was still there. And anything can happen in the last over especially if the first ball flies. The plan was to not bowl in Miller’s arc. Hardik was by now deliberately taking his time before starting to run in. He got the line right but the length horribly wrong.

That is how close Hardik came to ignominy again. Imagine the tide turning once again. Such are the margins. Eventually, though, he finished the game off. A great measure of what being part of a winning group in sport can do is how Rohit kissed Hardik on the cheek.

Speaking to Star Sports, a teary-eyed Hardik made two false starts and then finally managed to say: “Those six months, I wanted those six months of mine. I couldn’t even figure out what happened to me. I controlled a lot. I wanted to cry, but I didn’t. People who were happy with my misery, I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction. And I will never.

“Now look at the fate. I got a chance to do this in the final over. I couldn’t ever have imagined this. I am speechless.”

The biggest takeaway from all this is that no feeling is ever final until you retire in cricket. Even after retiring as a player, you can win your first World Cup, as Rahul Dravid did. You have to stay fit, dust yourself off, and get back to it. And if you can, rise above the results and live to tell the tale.