Head's magnificent 137 leads Australia to sixth World Cup title

India may be where the heart of the game now resides, but the coolest Head in cricket has once again been shown to be Australian. Travis Head, to be precise, who set up his side's record-extending sixth World Cup victory with a triumphantly paced 137 from 120 balls in Ahmedabad, but whose most significant contribution arguably came some six-and-a-half hours beforehand, with one of the most match-turning catches in ODI history.

What might have been for these two teams had Head not held onto a steepling, sprawling take, running backwards into the covers to saw off India's captain, Rohit Sharma, in his prime? Australia's eventual target of 241 would have been significantly higher, no doubt, and to judge by the ferocity with which India's new-ball bowlers clawed at their opponents in the powerplay - with Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami inevitably to the fore - there would have been all the more opportunities for their chase to have toppled off its tightrope.

Instead, Head held on, and in so doing, he applied a handbrake to a runaway innings that would never be fully released. On Rohit's watch, India had racked up 10 fours and three sixes in blazing along to 80 for 2 in the first powerplay. Once he'd gone, India mustered just four more fours, and 160 more runs, across the next 40 overs. It meant they were unable to post a total big enough to mitigate against the inevitable onset of dew - the primary reason why Pat Cummins had risked letting Rohit and Co. set the agenda in the first place.

And so Australia's victory came at a canter in the end, with six wickets standing and a huge 42 balls unused - a margin that would have been greater still but for Head's dismissal to the penultimate ball of the chase. Undeterred, Glenn Maxwell pulled his first ball for two to take his side through to a victory target which - as fate would have it - was the exact total that England and New Zealand had been unable to split by conventional means four years ago.

But that ease at the finish told nothing of the jeopardy that had preceded it. At 47 for 3 after seven overs, with Steven Smith inexplicably failing to review an lbw from Bumrah that was shown to have struck his pad outside off, Australia were in the thick of a do-or-die tussle against two of the most outstanding performers of India's previously peerless campaign.

David Warner, in what may turn out to be his final ODI innings, had scuffed Shami's first legitimate delivery to Virat Kohli at slip for 7, having fenced his own first ball of the innings (from Bumrah) past the same fielder's boot for four, and with Mitchell Marsh's attempt to hit the quicks off their lengths ending in a loose cut through to the keeper, the crowd had found its full voice for the first time in the game.

But Marnus Labuschagne, retained in Australia's starting XI despite the sense, mid-tournament, that he and Head were competing for a solitary berth, showed the value of his Test pre-eminence with an indomitable sidekick's role of 58 not out from 110 balls. Over by over, run by run, he and Head extended their crucial fourth-wicket stand of 192, seeing off pace and spin alike until, at some indefinable moment around the 20th over of the chase, the bite in a two-paced wicket was replaced with the even-sprayed skid of the long-promised dew.

When Bumrah returned for the 28th over for a last roll of the dice with Australia beginning to accelerate away on 148 for 3, he was greeted with three flayed fours from Head, either side of an excruciating umpire's call appeal for lbw against Labuschagne that felt like final proof that India's hope had gone.

Ultimately, it was a clinical and ruthlessly passion-killing display from the most formidable winners in the world game. Every man in Australia's XI played his part in sucking the marrow from a contest that, to judge by the sea of blue in the Narendra Modi Stadium's stands and the expectant attendance of the eponymous PM himself, had been intended as a coronation. Instead, the closing hour of the match was greeted in stunned silence by a 92,453-strong crowd, and nothing epitomised the sense of national anticlimax quite like the trophy-lift itself, for which Cummins was left forlorn on the podium for a full 20 seconds before his team was able to join him after accepting their handshakes away from centre stage.

Not that the lack of in-situ acclaim will derail Australia's sense of achievement. As Head's pivotal catch would ultimately prove, the tone for their victory was once again set in the field. As had been the case in the semi-final against South Africa, the 37-year-old Warner was their barometer, flinging himself with gusto to cut off numerous boundary balls, but while Rohit was on deck, it seemed that Cummins' brave decision to bowl first might get soon overwhelmed, like so many opponents before them, by India's extraordinary weight of strokemakers.

Instead, he backed his bowlers to complete the job they had started in their extraordinary tournament opener in Chennai, where India's top three had all made ducks in slumping to 2 for 3, only for their sub-par target of 200 to be picked off with ease. This time, the dew notwithstanding, he figured the pressure of the big occasion might weigh more heavily in the first innings than the second - especially if his attack could make their early breakthroughs.

All of which made Rohit's shortlived onslaught all the more brave, selfless even, as he shouldered the entire responsibility for India's powerplay proactivity, particularly against Josh Hazlewood, the instigator of that Chennai collapse. In the manner of his charging down the pitch to meet his hard lengths, there were shades of Sachin Tendulkar's pre-emptive attack on Glenn McGrath in the 2003 final … except on this occasion it seemed, briefly, to be working.

But then came the unequivocal moment of the match - a act of fielding majesty that stood immediate comparison with Kapil Dev's running catch off Viv Richards at the pivotal juncture of the 1983 final. Rohit had already slammed ten runs in two balls from Glenn Maxwell's second over, when he stepped into another slap over the long-off boundary, and miscued high out into the covers. Travis Head tracked back from point with the ball skewing high over his shoulder, and with his eyes never leaving the prize, timed his dive to perfection to cling on with both hands.

It will go down as a seminal World Cup moment. Australia had still been battered for 80 runs in the first powerplay - the joint-most conceded in that phase of the first innings of a World Cup final - but now they sensed their chance to turn the contest on its head. Two balls later, Cummins, into his second over, found Shreyas Iyer's edge as he poked without conviction or footwork, and at three down in the 11th, with Shubman Gill already gone to a flaccid pull off Mitchell Starc, Hardik Pandya's absence as India's lower-order pivot was suddenly revealed to be the weakness that Shami's stunning impact with the ball had hitherto concealed.

There had been no such angst while India had been pounding along in each of their ten previous tournament wins - including five untroubled chases to launch their campaign, and a net margin of 875 runs in their five subsequent bat-first victories. As a consequence, India's Nos. 6-11 had barely been called upon in scoring a total of 240 runs between them in those matches, the lowest of any team in this tournament, and now suddenly, with Shami and Bumrah inked in at Nos.8 and 9, none of their set batters dared to be the one to set that descent into the tail into motion.

At least in Kohli, India had a man whose tempo in such circumstances could be trusted. On his team's better days, and in spite of his formidable tournament haul of 765 runs at 95.62, his ruthless devotion to run-making had been mistaken for a weakness. Now his 56-ball fifty was the bedrock of his team's recovery, albeit the reaction to his latest landmark was a pent-up roar that merely exacerbated the anxious hubbub that had preceded it.

But Australia's magnificent attack could not be denied, especially after Cummins had seized on his opponents' visible reticence to smuggle through a churn of change bowlers. Between them, Maxwell, Head and Marsh burgled ten overs for 44, a perfect holding pattern that bought back options for the back end of the innings.

That included the return of the captain himself for the 29th over. With the third ball of his second spell, Cummins hit an awkward length with his short ball, and Kohli looked genuinely emotional as he under-edged onto his stumps with an angled bat, glared at the length from which it had lifted, and glanced over his shoulder before trudging off, as if assessing the pull shot he had chosen to keep in his locker.

KL Rahul endured, but was scarcely unable to unfurl either, even though he did break a 97-ball sequence without a boundary by lobbing Maxwell over his shoulder through fine leg for four, the longest such barren spell for any team in this tournament other than Netherlands, and India's longest between overs 11-50 since 1999.

But on 66, he and the lower order came face to face with another threat that India's own seamers would be forced to do without. In preparing a visibly dry and abrasive deck for this final, the curators had opened the possibility of reverse-swing, and few teams have more eager exponents than Australia. Starc, from round the wicket, straightened an unplayable delivery into Rahul's edge and through to the keeper.

Though Ravindra Jadeja is renowned as a scrapper in such circumstances, his promotion to No.6 couldn't contend with Hazlewood's similarly late movement. After surviving one review for caught-behind he succumbed to the very next ball for 6, at which point, India's easy progress to the final fully caught up with them. With no situational experience to fall back on - and no pace in the wicket with which to access his inverted V from fine leg to deep third - Suryakumar Yadav ground out 18 from 27 before lobbing Hazlewood to the keeper, by which stage he'd faced just five balls out of a possible 17 in his ninth-wicket stand with Kuldeep Yadav.

Kuldeep and Mohammed Siraj kept the innings alive to the final ball, but the mood within the stadium was never able to emerge from its funk. Australia had come with a plan, and the sure knowledge of what it truly takes to win the biggest title in the sport. Ahmedabad turned blue alright, but only with a wistful sense of what might have been.