The inside story of how MS Dhoni's stalwarts won the 2011 World Cup

For the first time ever, TOI presents what transpired in the dressing room during Team India's monumental winning run in the 2011 World Cup, as revealed by Paddy Upton, the team's mental conditioning coach at that time...

It was a week before the start of the ICC World Cup in 2011, and I sensed that it was probably the very first time that Sachin Tendulkar would have someone to look up to. Mostly, everyone looked up to him. Then Mike Horn entered the room.

As I'm writing this, Mike is recognised as probably the world's greatest modern-day adventurer. Mike has climbed four of the 8,000-metre-plus mountains without ever using high-altitude porters or supplementary oxygen. He has also covered the 7,000 km to the South Pole and back, walking alone.

For many of the Indian players, the pressure they would experience during the World Cup would be unlike anything they had ever had to endure. Knowing this, one of the players asked Mike how he prepared himself before entering these unknown worlds.



'Imagination,' was the unexpected answer. 'I strongly believe in mental preparation. I prepare through imagination. Forget that you are here, and imagine walking into a specific cricket stadium with your bat under your arm. Then imagine your stance and the bowler running up. Can you hear the crowd? What is the smell? What is the temperature? Your knowledge of the conditions becomes the most stable thing in your life. You prepare for that.' On the second night of Mike's visit, he asked whether the individuals sitting around him were actually a team. Somehow, he was not convinced that they bonded or behaved as a team. "My honest observation is that we're not a team yet. I might be wrong. If we can become a true team, the pressure that all of you as individuals carry will get offloaded and distributed through all of you. You don't win the second prize at a World Cup, guys. You lose the first prize. If you think it's okay to make the quarterfinals or the semifinals, you shouldn't be here. If you don't reach for the top, you're not even going to hit the bottom of the mountain."

The team meeting with Mike was about to adjourn when Gary (Kirsten, the coach) started speaking. He clearly had fire in his belly, and what he was about to say would change the nature of our conversations within the team until India would go on to win the World Cup six weeks later.

This is what Gary said to the players: "I recall myself saying that we weren't going to talk about winning the World Cup anymore. But Mike's blown that out of the water, and we're talking a lot about winning the World Cup. A lot of the time, we just say that we'll give our best. That's what it's about. I get a sense from what Mike is saying to us, and from the analogies that I'm picking up here, that giving your best is bullshit. Because that's the cop-out. 'We didn't win, but at least we gave our best...' "We have to go win this thing. Every one of us has got to believe so deep and so intensely that we are going to win this thing. Every one of us! And Mike talks a lot about the weak link. Are there guys out here that just say, 'We'll give it our best shot'? You have worked out a way to make excuses and how not to win. I've said to you guys many times before: We have the team to win this tournament. And we can either go and say we'll give it our best shot, or we can say we are going to f....ing go win this thing. Every one of us has to believe it deep down."

"Yuvi climbed his Everest against Australia. That was his final. In our semifinal against Pakistan, he got out for a golden duck. But he'd already earned himself the Player of the Tournament award. The cancerous tumour in Yuvi's lung was discovered shortly after the tournament. Here was a man who truly conquered Everest without using supplementary oxygen.

Yuvraj was to come in at 5, and Dhoni at 6. The most significant moment of that final, if not of the entire World Cup, was when an out-of-form Dhoni decided to bat ahead of Yuvraj. Although Yuvraj was a clear favourite for the player of the tournament by then, he had for all practical purposes already played his final against Australia.

He had literally been vomiting in the change room before the final-whether it was because of nerves or the illness we weren't aware of then, I don't know. MS just knew within himself that he was the man for the high-pressure situation. We were 31 for 2, and with Sehwag and Sachin having got out, we seemed to be in trouble.

Sehwag was the team's most destructive batsman, and Tendulkar the most experienced and most loved. But, in reality, India's best players under pressure were Gambhir and Dhoni. I will always remember that moment, that small gesture, which signalled (at least to me) that the World Cup was coming to India.

We were two wickets down, with Kohli and Gambhir at the crease. Dhoni always waits inside the dressing room before going to bat; he never sits outside. I was sitting next to Gary and Eric Simons (bowling coach) in the players' viewing area when we heard a tap on the window behind us. It was Dhoni. He looked at Gary and pointed to himself, signalling, 'I'm next in.' Whether that small gesture was a statement or a question addressed to his coach, I don't know. But Gary simply nodded his approval. And I smiled. Cometh the hour, cometh the man...

(Extracted with permission from 'The Barefoot Coach' by Paddy Upton, published by Westland)