Well, the best team of the tournament has won!

Mumbai: And that's what cricket is all about. It's an unpredictable game in which the best team is the one which emerges trumps in a tournament. It's nothing to do with 'deserving to win.' It's a game very unlike preparing for an exam and knowing how well you will perform. It's about who has won through the uncertainties of the game that is cricket!

But throughout the labyrinthine route that the ICC World Cup 2011 took ' with all its exciting moments and shock defeats of the Goliaths of the tournament by the Davids ' most Indians viewed their team's performances with an air of negativism: 'I don't think India will win this one'; 'Pakistan will make mincemeat out of India'; 'India? Win the Cup?! Ha!!'

And then, not to forget, the Goliath of the tournament who was tipped to win the World Cup 'hands down' ' Australia ' was beaten by Pakistan (in the group stage) and India (in the quarter-final), while being saved by rain when it came up against Sri Lanka in the group match. But all three Asian teams were the smaller Goliaths of the tournament compared to Australia.

India lost to South Africa in the group stages. The team lost nine wickets in a span of 29 runs to collapse from 267 for one to 296 all down.

That performance of Team India must have been like Manna from Heaven for the vast clan of negative-minded Indians. Sachin Tendulkar's 99th international ton in that match was eclipsed by the tsunami of curses for the entire team for having lost the match. Maybe they were right to an extent to criticise the team for losing it from a cracker of a start given by Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir.

But to carry that criticism to every following match that India played was unjust.

Shaky performances were demonstrated by almost every team in the tournament. But India's was spiced with the typical Indian negativism that features trouncing our own abilities even before the challenge is met. I saw people wanting to ' dying to ' predict an outcome that spelt doom for Team India. But the Men in Blue still made it to the top.

Guess what? The great Indian negativism now has another excuse for India's performance: 'The entire tournament was fixed', or even 'The matches India played were all fixed'.

A friend of mine, based in Hyderabad, even argued till he went blue in his face that it was meant to be India and another Asian country in the finals. Why? Because it propelled the betting mafia, which was engineering the outcome of each and every match!

A young lady watching the India-Pakistan semi-final in a pub even credited India's win to her negative utterances about India during the match. And I thought 'Oh boy! Negativity itself gets credit over an impressive performance by Team India!'

And if you think the great Indian negativity is about cricket alone, you are mistaken. But we are like this only!

See? Even I, as an Indian, am being negative-minded now!