The Glorious Khans

Andrew Miller:

A Pakistan with momentum is a beast that cannot be contained. England discovered that fact to their cost in 1992 at Melbourne, when Imran Khan's cornered tigers sprung at their throats to seize the country's first major global title. And now, a generation later but in a campaign of distinct and glorious parallels, Sri Lanka have also sampled the unstoppable alchemy that occurs when cricket's most emotional and temperamental participants find a way to meld their ambitions to their deeds.

Then, it was Imran Khan. Today, it is Younis Khan:

"I'm the second Khan winning a World Cup for Pakistan, so I'm very proud of my Khans," said Younis. "This is my dream. I dreamed all the time of lifting the World Cup. My thinking in all my career is that I will be remembered for a team like 1992. I was not in the Imran Khan team, and this is a dream come true. I'm really happy. Though this World Cup is Twenty20, at least we won our second World Cup. This is a gift to our whole nation."

More:

Both the captain and his Man of the Match hail from the troubled North West Frontier Province, and Afridi himself from the Khyber Agency, the symbolic frontline of Pakistan's War on Terror. Chaos can seem at times to be embedded in the Pakistani DNA, but as both men showed in their performances in this tournament, it does not have to be this way.