SK Flashback : World Cup 2003 Final - A thorn in the heart of Indian cricket fans

The postmortem

The final act: Australia wins the World Cup

As expected, a lot of postmortems was done for the loss. Some blamed it on Ganguly’s decision to bowl first as chasing in a World Cup finals is always a challenging task.

Few others were at Zaheer’s neck for his first over. Personally, I felt it was too much to put the blame entirely on Zaheer as a match of 100 overs can’t be decided by the outcome of just one.

In my opinion, it was just one of those days when nothing clicked for India. The Australians were the better team on the day and probably in the entire tournament.

Years later on Ganguly summed it up perfectly when he said, “We had a fantastic team in the 2003 World Cup. But, Australia was undoubtedly a cut above the rest. We played 11 games in the tournament and lost only two games - both against Australia.”