Seems that depending on which side of the tank you stand at, it can look like a square, an oval, a hexagon or a rectangle.

Apocrypha perhaps, but I was just thinking how cricket is a lot like that tank - your perspective changes depending on where you stand.

To give you a for instance: South Africa's super-coach Bob Woolmer felt that India won the Titan Cup because ``It lifted its performance with terrific support from the Bombay crowds.''

When Jonty Rhodes visited the Rediff office the morning after the match for a live chat, I asked him the same question. Jonty says: ``Hey, crowds these days yell, they make a noise, root for the home side. Doesn't really matter - a 50 over game goes by pretty fast, you've got hundreds of things to be thinking about so you don't really have the time to be bothering about what the crowd is doing.''

Interestingly, Rhodes felt that home crowd pressure tended to be more on India than on visiting teams. ``It's like, you've got 50,000 people going silent or, worse, booing you if you play one bad shot, and yelling for your head if you get out that can get really scary!''

Again, Jonty had a different perspective about the packed itinerary, and the enormous travelling involved in playing seven different games across the Indian sub-continent in the space of just over a fortnight. ``Actually, the part I hate is the 5.30 am flights, but that is true no matter which country you are touring. As for the rest, it doesn't matter really. I mean, you land in a city one day, play a game the next - sure, you don't get much chance to practise if it's like that but when you are playing cricket every second day, you don't need that much practise either. It's, like, South Africa is winning, so we are pretty cool with these things - it's when you begin to lose that these little things begin to irritate you more than they should.''

But back to the game. Hansie Cronje believes the key to India's win lay in the bowling of Anil Kumble and Venkatesh Prasad. ``All the Indians bowled well, but Prasad and Kumble were fantastic,'' said the SA skipper.

Jonty agrees. ``Kumble we've always known was a killer, but Prasad yesterday was mind blowing, just too good,'' the ace fielder said.

Winning captain Sachin Tendulkar, though, tends to give the credit to the Indian batsmen, especially Ajay Jadeja who with a superb 43 off 42 runs gave the Indian scorecard a real boost. ``We batted well on a not so easy pitch and Jadeja was outstanding,'' said Tendulkar.

The one thing everyone - Sachin, Cronje, Jonty, Woolmer - all agree was that the toss was vital. ``The spin of the coin was crucial, we would have liked to have batted first,'' said Cronje and Tendulkar agreed that ``It was a good toss to win.''

What is interesting is that the Indian media has, by and large, ascribed the South African defeat to a lack of big match temperament. ``We have so far played 11 tournaments and won eight,'' smiles Cronje. ``If that is lack of big match temperament, then what more can I say?''

As winning captain, Tendulkar has the last word: ``Any team today is equal to any other, it depends how you play on the day,'' said Tendulkar, after his maiden title triumph since taking over as India's captain. ``The boys worked hard, though things weren't going well for us in mid-tournament they never gave up. They deserve this win.''