The Indian duo took the game deep, like Dravid instructed them to, and pulled off a fabulous chase to seal the series ©AFP
"This is the kind of inning you dream of when you start playing cricket - that one day I will bat for India at 7 or 8, maybe even 9, but finish the match," Deepak Chahar said after India's three-wicket win on Tuesday.
For some critical parts of India's chase though, victory was not even the motive.
"The only plan was to bat till the end," Bhuvneshwar Kumar admitted after playing an underrated part in the thrilling win. "At no point did we tell each other that from hereon we can win or lose. Even when the last run was needed, we were trying to take it one ball at a time."
Chahar, the chief run-maker in the unbeaten run-a-ball 84-run stand, revealed that the message of batting till the end had come from Rahul Dravid, the Indian head coach on the tour. Dravid had unfurled the mantra of 'winning or losing doesn't matter, the process does' in 2005 when under his captaincy India had lost their only match of the seven-ODI series against Sri Lanka in Ahmedabad. It's a philosophy that he has long held and carried it along in his coaching stints as well.
But for one of the most standout partnerships ever in ODIs for India, forged by the No 8 and No 9 batsmen, it was interesting how out of sync the two protagonists of the alliance were with their desires. Chahar may have been playing with the same diktat from the coach, but could sense victory once the target had come below 50.
"We were just trying to play every ball. Once it came under 50, I felt we could win," Chahar admitted in the post match press conference. "We just need a few hits. That is when I decided to hit boundaries and after that a six (42.2 - off Lakshan Sandakan). It gave us momentum."
If the first match gave a glimpse of the care-free, high risk-nature of the
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