JOHANNESBURG - It was meant to be Sachin Tendulkar's day of destiny. It was meant to be Tendulkar versus Lee, immovable object meets unstoppable force. A cricketing duel to die for.
It never happened.
The world's fastest bowler never even got to take aim at the world's greatest batsman in yesterday's World Cup final.
By the time Brett Lee was marking out his run-up, "The Little Master" was already back in the pavilion, dismissed by Glenn McGrath's fifth ball, and India were heading for defeat.
Tendulkar's departure broke a billion hearts and must have deflated his team-mates as well.
It may yet reopen the interminable Indian debate over whether their best player should be granted his wish of opening the innings.
Sourav Ganguly's side already faced a momentous task in chasing 360 for victory against the best unit in the world.
Without Tendulkar, that target galloped over the horizon as India went down by 125 runs, Australia underlining their global dominance to become the first side to win three World Cups.
Tendulkar must have been broken-hearted too.
Looking to hook his second boundary of the opening over, he got a leading edge and sent the ball straight up in the air. McGrath strode down the pitch, demanded the honour and claimed the catch.
As against Pakistan earlier in the tournament - when the Little Master had scored a lightning, matchwinning 98 and shredded the nerves of strike bowler Shoaib Akhtar in the process - Tendulkar had made a bold statement of intent by taking first strike.
This time, though, it did not work.
You could almost have heard a pin drop among the 31,000 crowd as Tendulkar trudged off. Virender Sehwag's bold run-a-ball 82 and Rahul Dravid's 47 were reduced to footnotes as India were dismissed for 234.
Earlier, Australian captain Ricky Ponting scored 140 not out and the softly spoken, broken-fingered Damien Martyn 88 not out in sharing a 234-run stand as their side reached 359 for two.
Tendulkar was generous in his praise afterwards.
"Ponting played an important role," he said. "I would surely rate this innings as one of the best."
Ponting's majestic performance came in two distinct parts. His first 50, full of clever pushes and glides and nudges, took 74 balls and contained one boundary.
The next 47 deliveries saw him hit eight sixes - a cup record - three more fours and 90 runs. No man had ever scored as many in the sport's greatest showpiece.
It was almost as if he decided enough was enough, having got to his half-century. The next two balls he faced from Harbhajan Singh both disappeared into the back of the mid-wicket stands.
Whoever bowled, the ball returned there at regular intervals as Ponting, all quick-silver hands and dancing feet, made his 13th one-day century.
Tendulkar, honoured as the man of the tournament by Sir Garfield Sobers after the match at the Wanderers, has made a world-record 34 hundreds in the shorter form of the game.
But he would probably have swapped them all for an innings of Ponting's quality and significance yesterday.
"It was my most satisfying innings, no doubt about that," Ponting said. "To do it today, when it really mattered, was something very special."
Those words, India had hoped, would be spoken by their idol.
It must have tortured them to hear them uttered instead in Ponting's Tasmanian twang.
- REUTERS
World Cup schedule
Points table
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.
Latest from Sport
Fox makes cut after scrappy second round
After a mixed round, Fox and Higgo go into the weekend four shots off the lead.