Harbhajan Singh's winning strike off Mohammed Aamer may never acquire the historical resonance of Javed Miandad's counter-punch to a Chetan Sharma full toss in Sharjah, but it did show the way forward. A loss against Sri Lanka in the last league match remained an aberration and in the final, the Indians silenced the Sinhalese bands in the stands.

Dhoni and Gautam Gambhir, with 173 and 203 runs each, propped up the batting through the tournament and Dinesh Karthik, stepping into Virender Sehwag's huge shoes, held his own with scores of 40 and 66 and a surprising Man of the Finals. 

Among the bowlers, Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra and Praveen Kumar bagged six wickets each and luckily for India, the seam trio delivered their most telling blows in the final. But it is a sobering thought that the talented Ishant Sharma along with S. Sreesanth, R.P. Singh, Munaf Patel, Sudeep Tyagi and Irfan Pathan, are struggling on the wayside. In the spin department, Harbhajan Singh remains unchallenged, though R. Ashwin showed lot of promise and will soon challenge the turbanotor. 

Crowned as champions of Asia, Dhoni's men need to realise that there is a huge gulf between emerging as a continental champion and being the top team in the world. There has never been a better litmus test than the World Cup to confirm a team's stature and India has never replicated its jaw-dropping 1983 triumph at Lords. 

Dhoni was a pleased man after witnessing his side lift their game every time it mattered in the tournament, with the only defeat coming in the inconsequential league match against Sri Lanka. "This was a very satisfying win for us since we won three out of four games," Dhoni said. "It was an important tournament, four of the best sides were playing, and each side was quite balanced, overall happy with the performance."

With the final being played on a fresh pitch, getting to bat first proved a big advantage at a venue where the team batting second usually finds it harder to score. "The guys were pumped-up to perform. It was a good toss to win, conditions were ideal for batting," Dhoni said. "It got a bit slower as the game progressed and it started doing a bit under the lights, the fast bowlers made the most out of it." 

There were some aspects of the finals showing that he felt needed improvement, such as the number of batsmen who didn't go on to score half-centuries after getting their eye in. "Most of us got the starts that was needed, we should have converted those starts," he said. "But if you win a game nobody questions that but it is very important to learn even if you are winning games, I still think we could have scored more runs and given the bowlers the extra cushion of 15-20 runs."