nEW DELHI, MARCH 13 Nine runs, last over, Saurav Ganguly walks up to Ashish Nehra, one billion hearts stop beating. And in the living room of a house in Delhi Cantonment, Durban, a German Shepherd, stops pacing to settle down quietly near a sofa, blinking.

He’s the Nehra family pet. And he has to hold his wagging.

‘‘Stay where you are, don’t move. Keep quiet,’’ says father Diwan Nehra to the dog and to two of his brother’s children who can’t stop whispering into each other’s ears.

Mother Sumitra and elder brother Dinkar don’t say a word.

As Rana Navedul Hasan misses the first ball — a dot ball — there is some clapping. Muted, hesitant, eyes fixed on Nehra walking back. When Rana takes a single off the next, the father says, under his breath: ‘‘Aath run rah gaye (Eight runs to go.)’’ He’s sure the son has heard.

Tension, spread taut across the room, breaks, just enough for a few smiles to show through, when Moin Khan fails to score off the third ball.

  ...AND ON SMS TURF  

• BJP: Khel bhi jeeta, dil bhi jeeta. Shabash India! (Won the match, won the hearts. Well done India) • Congress: Aaj hua hai dil sukhi cricket se, kal dukhi hoga BJP kayee wicket se! (Today one is happy with cricket, tomorrow BJP will lose many wickets) • Congress: Bharat ko jitne ki sahi aas thi, Rahul aur Priyanka team ke paas the! (India was right in hoping to win, as Rahul and Priyanka were with the team) • Congress: Bharat jita, jita desh mahaan, aam admi ko mila samman! (India won, a great country won and a comman man is honoured) — ENS

‘‘If we can contain Moin, we can win,’’ says the brother as the Pakistan keeper takes a single.

Two balls and seven runs, it isn’t rocket science: a six and a one, a four and a three, Pak can still win. So the brother joins the billion giving the Bowler advice: ‘‘Bowl a dot ball. That will do for now.’’

Rana runs for a single—as if his life depended on it. Six needed off the last ball and with Moin to face, the family remembers a man called Miandad, a place called Sharjah and a bowler called Chetan Sharma. The TV cameras don’t help, they even close up on that man gesturing, perhaps saying, ‘‘This is how you hit a six.’’

The mother turns the other way and refuses to look at her son. And she doesn’t until Zaheer Khan takes the catch, until everyone in the room is shouting, until everyone is hugging each other, until she finishes the prayer.