The dressing room, despite the daunting target of 234, was not a tomb of despair. Not yet. A quiet tension hummed, yes, but it was laced with a desperate kind of hope. The team had faced tough chases before, though never quite this monumental. Coach Reddy, pragmatic as ever, laid out the required run rate, daunting as it was, but his voice carried a steely resolve. "They scored 234 on this pitch. It's a batting track. If they can do it, so can we. Focus on partnerships. Keep believing."
The players echoed the sentiment, trying to convince themselves as much as each other. "We've got the firepower!" someone declared. "It's a flat pitch, boundaries are easy!" Aarav, though his stomach churned with a mixture of dread and anticipation, found himself nodding along. If the opposition could score so freely, surely they, with their own strong batting lineup, could at least put up a fight. The memory of 2015 was there, a faint, unsettling hum in the background, but it was overshadowed by the immediate, fervent desire to win this final.
Their chase began with a burst of aggression. The openers, fueled by the team's belief, came out swinging, finding gaps and launching audacious strokes. The scoreboard ticked over rapidly, and for a glorious few overs, it felt possible. The tension in the dugout eased; maybe, just maybe, this wouldn't be a repeat.
But cricket, as Aarav knew, had a cruel way of delivering painful lessons. The opposition bowlers, initially put on the back foot, found their rhythm. The first wicket fell in the Powerplay – a sharp catch in the slips, stemming the flow of runs. Then, the crucial second, a mistimed pull. The initial optimism began to fray.
As the middle overs unfolded, and the required run rate stubbornly climbed higher and higher, the early hope in the dugout slowly, agonizingly, bled away. Each dismissal felt heavier than the last. A top-edge trying to clear the infield. A run-out amidst a moment of indecision. The crucial batsmen, one by one, trudged back, their shoulders slumped, their faces etched with the growing realization of the impossible.
It was then, as the score spiraled and the overs dwindled, that the ghost of 2015 truly materialized for Aarav. The memory of that World Cup semi-final, which had once been the spark for his ambition, now felt sickeningly present, not as a memory, but as a chilling live replay. He saw the same overwhelming total, the same desperate attempts to accelerate, the same relentless fall of wickets. He remembered Kohli's stunned walk, Dhoni's valiant, isolated fight against an inevitable tide.
He looked at his teammates now, their faces mirroring the despair he'd felt watching India back then. He saw Raghav, grim-faced, trying to consolidate but clearly struggling under the immense pressure. The opposition bowlers, once again, seemed unplayable, their confidence soaring with every passing over. The gap between balls seemed to stretch, the runs came in trickles, and the required rate spiraled hopelessly out of control.
Just like that day, the crucial partnership wouldn't form. There was no one to absorb pressure effectively, no one to truly support the few who tried to fight. Each new batsman walked out looking more defeated than the last, an easy target for the jubilant opposition. The final was slipping away, exactly as the World Cup had. The pain of March 26, 2015, was not just stirring; it was playing out right before his eyes, and he was living it from the inside this time.