Cricket has won the hearts and minds of an entire nation once again. Just a few months back after crashing out of the first round of the 50-over World Cup in West Indies, the Indian team could do nothing right.

The coach was bad, Irfan Pathan had lost his swing, and Virender Sehwag could not face two balls before edging one to the slips.

Cut to September 2007, Pathan bowls magnificently to help India win the TT World Cup ( 20-20 and not table tennis), Sehwaag doesn't play the final but does enough to show that the booming drives are back and we the fickle minded cricket lovers are smiling once again.

The same advertisers, who were pulling down the billboards showcasing Dhoni and Yuvraj are back in business, TV channels who were still licking their wounds after suffering huge financial losses in the World Cup with India's early exit, are partying again.

But has Indian cricket rediscovered its resilience? Well, partially yes. Cricket is well and truly now the game that's being played in maidans across the country and not just the well-equipped stadiums in the bigger metros.

Joginder Sharma's Rohtak, Rohit Sharma's Borivali, MS Dhoni's Ranchi, are not the places where TV channels keep their TRP meters. They are not the places where the advertisers think of putting up giant hoardings to sell their products. Yet, the passion, the desire to make it to the same league as those who are from the bigger cities, is propelling these men to unthinkable heights.

When Joginder Sharma got hit for a six on his second ball, he didn't break into tears or anything. Close up of his face showed no signs of any nervousness. Post-match, Skipper Dhoni, claimed that he had to go with Joginder since his more experienced bowler Harbhajan Singh couldn't get his Yorkers in the right place.

But then throughout the innings, Joginder couldn't get the ball anywhere near the stumps. In Glen McGrath's book of bowling in the corridor of uncertainty, bowling near the wide ball mark is just not on. But in the end, Joginder just stuck to his basics. He just did, what he had been doing throughout the innings. Probably, if Misbah would have attempted a more orthodox cricketing shot, who knows what the final result could have been. This is the moment that Joginder must have dreamt of ever since he would have started playing cricket. And, there at the Wanderers, he must have been thinking if one false move on his part could have turned him into a villain. But he just didn't give in. That's the fabric of those who come from small towns.

The story is the same in most professions. If you ever talk to top editors, they will be the first ones to tell you, that Hindi journalists just always have more spark, more ideas. But can you name two top Hindi print journos? In the corridors of power too, the big town small town divide, the Hindi vs English debate is the same. Go and say hi to any of the more flamboyant ministers, and your probability of getting a bigger scoop will increase. Say pranam or namaskar, well, you may not even get an appointment.

It's in this context, that Dhoni's devils will be remembered for a long long time. Minus the troika of Sachin, Saurav and Dravid, they have done what no one actually expected them to do. When they reached South Africa, the self-proclaimed cricket pundits were saying, " India is just not ready for 20-20. This is just a masala game. Think of what we will do once Sachin retires. Do we have replacements?"

Now suddenly, all this talk makes no sense. Yuvraj Singh has come into his own. Robin Utappa is showing that he needs to be persisted with, and RP Singh is telling the world what good swing bowling can actually achieve. Along with Irfan Pathan and a mercurial Sreesanth the trio are probably going to take Indian cricket into the future.

While in cricket, we seemed to have worked out a golden mantra, in politics we are still not sure of generation next. Look at the two main parties. They are grappling with the intricacies of Ram, Ramayana and Ram Sethu.

To the audience at large it may actually not make any sense at all. But for our netas, it enough to hit the streets. Maybe both the BJP and the Congress need to do some self introspection as well. Why should an LK Advani think in terms of projecting himself as the Prime Ministerial candidate? Why should attempts be made to put Rahul Gandhi on the fast track to top job? Is there such a huge dearth of young dynamic leaders that we will only go by either family or how many summers have we seen go by?

You can't have a situation where the top two national parties are either forcing a leader on us or forcing a leader upon themselves. If Mahendra Singh Dhoni's boys could have come this far, surely a similar example can be created in our civil society as well.

Can we have a Joginder Sharma kind of figure in politics, or have the Laloos, the Mayawatis and the Mulayams already satisfied our appetite? It's the answer to this question, which will determine the shape of what former President Kalam describes "INDIA AT 2020".