My focus is on the unadulterated joy caused by that genius answering to the name of V Anand whene he retained the World Chess Championship title with a fine victory over Veselin Topalov with black pieces in the 12th game in Sofia. For someone who endured a four day road trip to get to the match venue, he was simply the master.

I speak of the unbridled optimism when the Indian badminton men and women’s teams made it to the quarterfinals of the Thomas and Uber Cups in Kuala Lumpur. The fact that P Kashyap took a game off the legendary Taufiq Hidayat and that Saina Nehwal held her own in the face of the Korean onslaught on her team augured well for Indian badminton.

I speak of the hope that was sparked in our hearts that the hockey team had begun its arduous walk back to the top half of world rankings when it beat Australia in the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup tournament in Ipoh. It was a rare victory over a side from Down Under but that did not send me into a tizzy of ecstasy since the Australian squad was at best an experimental outfit.

Yet, there was a huge sense of disappointment that the Indian cricket team – which has the largest television viewership – caused by its inability to make it to the semifinals of the ICC World Twenty20 in the West Indies. For a side that was expected to be among the front-runners in the tournament, India stunned its followers with an early exit

A number of reasons have been put forth for India’s successive defeats to Australia, the West Indies and Sri Lanka. The biggest was the failure of the batsmen to come to grips with the challenge of playing on a bouncy track in Bridgetown against Australia and the West Indies or accelerate in the second half of its innings against Sri Lanka on a more comfortable pitch.

The selectors must take a large part of the blame for not giving the team management any choice as far as batting is concerned – Dinesh Karthik was the only one available and let us not forget he was on the squad mainly as a reserve wicket-keeper and not as a specialist batsman. It forced the team to play both Ravindra Jadeja and Yusuf Pathan as bits and pieces players.

It is not just with hindsight that I believe Piyush Chawla’s presence in the tour party was a luxury that the side could not afford. And then to have carried Vinay Kumar – and flown in Umesh Yadav as a replacement for the injured Praveen Kumar – without showing much faith in them suggested that the team management was not aligned with the thinking of the selectors,

Of course, the team erred in playing just two seam bowlers in Zaheer Khan and Ashish Nehra even on the bouncier tracks in Bridgetown. The ploy worked like magic against South Africa in the Beausejour Stadium at Gros Islet in St. Kitts. Mahendra Singh Dhoni challenged the South Africans with plenty of spin and reaped dividends.

Sadly, even after the defeat by Australia in the opening Group F game in Bridgetown, India persisted with the same plan instead of playing Vinay Kumar ahead of an extra spin bowling option. On a track that offered pace and bounce to the quicker bowler ready to bend his back, India did not have anyone with that quality.

But more than anything else, it was the much vaunted Indian batting line-up’s inability to cope with chin music in Bridgetown that let the team down. For all that, it is critical that we do not allow that one emotion called anger to surface. It is one thing to be disappointed with and critical of the batting performances but another thing to be angry with the side,

Perhaps the fact the matchless Anand won his fourth world title and gave the nation so much cheer about will temper some of the anger; may be the ‘revival’ of Indian hockey (and let me reiterate that I am not convinced that it is) will shift some of the negative focus from the Indian cricketers.  Yes, at least, some of us did not go berserk because some team won the Premiership.

Nor, for that matter, will it indicate how Pakistan themselves have bounced back from virtual isolation in world cricket in the wake of the Lahore attack. The final will be much more than usual T20 cricket game – it will be an amalgam of myriad emotions and yet players will have to shut out and concentrate on the ball.

To be sure, this is more than a simple game of cricket. If you look carefully beyond the cricket, you may find some dark emotions that the player so dearly want to drive away. And if you get past those as well, you may find other wonderful emotions, notably hope that flickers and powers them – and the peoples they represent.

“I think it is a fitting reward for the courage that the team has shown in this tournament,” Sri Lanka captain Kumar Sangakkara said after the semifinal win over the West Indies. “What Lahore got home to us was the fact that we are just the same as anyone else. It is great the way the guys have prepare mentally and we are concentrating on cricket.”

The genial Pakistan captain Younis Khan also indicated that the ICC World Twenty20 would mean a lot to the people of Pakistan. “Our law and order situation is not the best; there is a lot of fighting going on,” he said. “If we win this title, it will be a good change for my people – especially those from the north where I hail from.”

To sit down and assess the cricketing talent of the sides squaring up in the second successive all-Asian Derby in the final of the ICC World Twenty20 would be in some ways reducing the beauty of this game that amply reflects the life and times we live in, mirrors the society in which the teams learn and play their cricket.

On March 3, when gunmen attack the Sri Lankan team bus and left the cricket world wounded permanently, few would have wagered on the team from the teardrop island in the Indian Ocean and the side from a nation that is ravaged by strife making it to the title clash of the first ICC competition.

But it is a tribute to the competitive spirit of the men from both nations that they have not only willed themselves on but have beaten some very good sides to make it to the final. And, what is more, the two teams have kept a low profile, Sri Lanka despite winning all six games in the tournament so far.

Now, Sri Lanka and Pakistan – armed with sets of wonderfully gifted cricketers with different skill sets but united by a singularity of purpose – will have to send all thoughts and emotions to the sub-conscious and focus on optimising the talent over 40 overs so they can lay their hands on the coveted prize.

The teams:

Sri Lanka (from): Kumar Sangakkara (captain, wicket-keeper), Sanath Jayasuriya, Tillekeratne Dilshan, Mahela Jayawardene, Chamara Silva, Jehan Mubarak, Angelo Mathews, Lasith Malinga, Muttiah Muralitharan, Ajantha Mendis, Isuru Udana. Indika de Saram, Nuwan Kulasekara, Farvez Maharoof and Thilan Thushara.

Pakistan (from): Younis Khan (captain), Kamran Akmal (wicket-keeper), Shahzaib Hasan, Shahid Afridi, Shoaib Malik, Misbah-ul-Haq, Abdul Razzaq, Fawad Alam, Saeed Ajmal, Mohammad Aamer, Umar Gul, Salman Butt, Sohail Tanvir, Ahmed Shehzad and Iftikhar Anjum.

A journalist friend of mine from Bangladesh, asked me what I would do at T20. It is for P3 reporters, he taunted. But I had made my commitment to watch the cricket for whatever it was worth and enjoy the opportunity of watching the game. Perhaps, pegging expectations low helped and I have a feast that I am unlikely to forget in a hurry.

Two weeks after the first ball was bowled, I am now in the Press Box at the Wanderers, awaiting the excitement of covering the final between India and Pakistan. Had you told me a fortnight ago that the sub-contintental neigbours would be playing for the $490,000 top prize, I may have laughed it off as wishful thinking. But two amazing weeks have changed all that.

With only the final left to be played, I look back at my experience over the past fortnight and believe that game is for the smart cricketer, the fan in a hurry and the young journalist who can find news ways to describe the whole range of emotions that players and fans alike go through in the span of three hours at each match.

I had not even settled down in the press box at the Kingsmead Cricket Ground in Durban when New Zealand pace bowlers Shane Bond and Mark Gillespie claimed four Kenya wickets for one run in the first two overs. The excitement hasn’t stopped flowing since and we have been lucky that we have got a day’s break between matches.

There are so many wonderful memories already. A tie in the India-Pakistan league game and then the bowl out that saw India win 3-0. Indian left-hander Yuvraj Singh’s six sixes off England pace bowler Stuart Broad, Australian paceman Brett Lee’s hat-trick, Pakistan leg-spinner Shahid Afridi’s nagging accuracy. Some stunning games tested my nerve, too.

And now, just 40 overs remain to be bowled for the winner and loser to be separated. I had never imagined that I would be at a T20 final and one featuring India and Pakistan at that! The Wanderers has provided a great atmosphere, thousands of Asians filling in what they call the Bull Ring, waving flags of the two nations and inspiring the DJ on location to play music from the sub-continent.

I have been to Test matches and one-day internationals featuring the two teams in India and Pakistan and in one-day games in places like Sharjah, Colombo and Old Trafford and Southampton in England. And have felt the needle, becoming an unwilling party of the hype that surrounds such matches. Happily, that needle has been absent – or so I would like to believe.

I have had goose pimples at cricket grounds many times but never like I did when the teams had lined up for the national anthems of the two countries at the Wanderers on Monday. India’s Jana Gana Mana and then Pakistan’s Pak Sarzamin resounded at the stadium.