document: Geoffrey Boycott : India 's World Cup final victory over Sri Lanka fitting reward for a superb team effort Before the final everyone was talking about the big two , Muttiah Muralitharan and Sachin Tendulkar . Could Murali go out with a big bang ? Or Tendulkar score his hundredth hundred and make a billion people happy ? No . To both . This match was n't about individuals . It was about the team and it was a fantastic effort by India . Muralitharan 's last game was not great . He was flat and his bowling lacked its usual venom . Sachin fell early , leaving MS Dhoni to show the way . He had the temperament and the will to see India home . It was a marvellous , tense and thrilling performance . Tactically , it was not Dhoni 's best day as captain . His bowlers were poor in the last 10 overs . Then Virender Sehwag and Tendulkar , his big two batsmen , went early to make Sri Lanka favourites . Gautam Gambhir steadied India 's nerves playing well for his 97 . But with the three off-spinners starting to spin the ball and causing problems , particularly for Gambhir , Dhoni made a brave and sensible decision to promote himself ahead of the in-form batsman Yuvraj Singh , who was eventually named man of the tournament . Dhoni , as a right hander , finds it easier than Yuvraj , who is left-handed , to play the off-spinners turning the ball but it was still a brave decision because Dhoni had made very few runs this tournament . At the start of his innings , he was careful and a little scratchy but , once into his stride , he bludgeoned the off-spinners with old-fashioned bottom-hand power and quick bat speed . Dhoni 's performance and the whole day was a great advert for 50-over cricket , especially as some countries want the next World Cup to revert to a 40-over format . Well , you can forget that now . India is the financial powerhouse of world cricket . Television stations are competing for the rights , companies are queuing up to be sponsors and now , with India as world champions , I ca n't see them agreeing to change the format in the near future . The only disappointing aspect was the toss . That was a pathetic episode . My experience of 25 years playing the game and 20 years commentating tells me something definitely was n't right . It was n't in the spirit of cricket . The match referee supervises the toss for one reason : to ensure it goes smoothly and fairly . It certainly did n't go smoothly because they had to do it twice . Dhoni and Jeff Crowe did not hear what Sangakkara called . Crowe should have done a better job and ensured Sangakkara 's call before Dhoni tossed the coin . Dhoni was there on behalf of his team trying to win the most important match for all of India . He should have made sure he heard the call . Dhoni let India down and Crowe let cricket down . That would have been a big story if India had lost the game . After Mahela Jayawardene 's hundred , that looked likely . It was a wonderful milestone but , quite frankly , he did not have to play a shot in anger until he was in his 80s . The pitch was good and all he had to do was steer the ball , angle and caress it , because much of the bowling was ineffective and lacked penetration . India gave one of their poorest bowling displays of the tournament but their best fielding . To play Sreesanth , who had n't bowled for six weeks since the first match of the tournament , was a hell of a gamble . When he did bowl in that first game he was absolute rubbish , spraying it all over the park and got smashed . Zaheer Khan has been one of the best bowlers of the competition but went for 56 in his last five overs by bowling too many length balls . A total of 91 came off the last 10 because India bowled length deliveries . The history of one-day cricket tells you to bowl straight yorkers and I thought Sri Lanka got 25 runs too many but then Dhoni played the innings of his life .
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