On April 2, 2011, when MS Dhoni flipped the coin in front of a raucous Wankhede crowd in Mumbai, nobody was sure about the pandemonium that it might result in. It's still unclear as to what Kumar Sangakkara, the rival skipper, called. In the midst of the entire din, his answer went unheard, by Dhoni, match referee Jeff Crowe and Ravi Shastri - the toss presenter.
There has been two tales to the controversy Former England captain, Michael Vaughan , tweeted almost immediately and was pretty convinced that Dhoni had won the toss. In an apparent reference to Sangakkara, he went on to claim that the Sri Lankan captain had called wrongly and there was a bit of skullduggery involved. On the other hand, a leading cricket website claimed that the television producers clearly heard Sangakkara calling correctly, only for Dhoni and Crowe to miss it completely.
In the eventuality, the toss was replayed and Sangakkara called it correctly the second time around, beaming as he elected to bat first, much to the dismay of the Indian captain and hordes of partisan supporters. But as fate willed, that was the only thing Dhoni did wrong on that day. Chasing 275, he promoted himself ahead of Man of the Series, Yuvraj Singh, and went on to play a spell-binding unbeaten knock of 91.
With the Indians emerging victorious, the controversy surrounding the toss fiasco was soon forgotten. In hindsight, one captain knew that something was amiss. Would the issue have died down completely had India lost the final? Thats a question to which we do not know the answer even today.
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