India's loss to South Africa in the first game of the Super Eight stage of the ICC T20 World Cup is the perfect example of the kind of wake-up call champions need to get rid of any complacency and tighten up their game for the next rounds. It happens in individual sports too, where a higher ranked player may try cruising against an unknown, well below the rankings player and suddenly find the match slipping away from him. He then brings his ‘A’ game on the table and turns on the heat to win a match that lasted longer than he would have expected it to, when he entered the arena.

In India’s case, it was more the margin of defeat that would have rankled, having beaten the same opponent in the final of the same tournament a couple of years earlier. Whatever it was, the loss was just the recharge that the team needed and after that, the team played superlative cricket leaving no doubt in the minds of even the cynics from the old powers that they are the best white-ball team in the game.