Auckland: Like a fabled army they continued to trample all that came in their way. Resistances, big and small, were crushed mercilessly, reducing them to the sorry state of dust. Their march knew no boundaries and they breathed only to win.
Sounds like fiction? But that's how Mahendra Singh Dhoni's merry men have been in this World Cup so far. We are used to India's abject surrenders in overseas conditions. Glory on foreign shores have been few and far between. Their current form, thus, is almost surreal.
On Saturday, at the Eden Park, here, India brushed aside Zimbabwe by six wickets in their final Pool B match. The win was their 10th on the trot in World Cups, extending from the 2011 edition.
The match was closer than the margin suggests. And to be honest, Zimbabwe, whose 2015 World Cup thus ended with five defeats and a single victory, gave the world champions a real scare.
They posted 287 - though 30 more would have done justice to the promise they showed - after being put into bat. Yes, the Eden Park lacks in size, but still the 12 sixes they hit off the Indian bowlers underlines their dominance. Then, at one stage they had the Indians in a knot, reducing them to 92 for four.
But so what? The Indian team, at the moment, is like a roller on a slope. Unstoppable. Despite the jolts, they reached home with eight balls to spare. They hit six sixes less than the Zimbabweans, but then it was their sixth win in a row of this Cup. So they actually hit a much bigger 'six' than their rivals.
The protagonists of Saturday's win were Suresh Raina and Dhoni. When they joined forces, they had an uphill task. By the time they finished, they had reached the peak.
Raina, the Man of the Match, made the most of a reprieve on 47 to remain unbeaten on 110. Dhoni was his usual efficient best, slamming 85 not out off 76 balls. Together, they shared an unconquered 196-run stand and thus passed the much-needed lower middle-order test ahead of the knockout stage.
But Saturday was not just about India, Raina and Dhoni. It was also about Brendan Taylor, who played his last international match for Zimbabwe. He saved his best for the last and how!
His majestic 138 off 110 balls, with classic lofts and unconventional reverse sweeps, will go down as one of the finest farewell innings of all time.
How much will Zimbabwe miss Taylor? Just subtract his 138 from the Zimbabwean total of 287. The 149 that remains gives one an idea of how out of shape a Taylor-less Zimbabwe might be in the coming days.
Taylor's no Andy Flower, but the 29-year-old right-handed batsman has immortalised his place in the history of Zimbabwean cricket with a breathtaking innings on Saturday.
For 11-odd years, he has been the tailor, Taylor if you say, who has sewn up the shabby cloak that Zimbabwean cricket has worn. And even in his last innings for his team, his did his job with all the professionalism that is expected from an international cricketer.
When Taylor walked on to the pitch, Zimbabwe were limping at 13 for two. When he walked out of the ground, his head held high, eyes seemingly moist, the Africans had reached 235 and it was just the 42nd over.
Fifteen boundaries and five sixes meant that he scored almost 66 per cent of his runs in boundaries. Fittingly enough, he brought up his hundred with a smart lift off Shami over the third-man region for a six.
Along with Sean Williams (50) and Craig Ervine (27), Taylor stitched two crucial partnerships. While the first one yielded 93, the second one produced 109 runs. All-rounder Sikander Raza's 15-ball 28 too powered the Zimbabwean innings.
While it turned out to be a good day for the Indian batsmen, for the bowlers it was as if someone poured a bucket of cold water while they were warm and cosy in sleep. A wake-up call, in other words.
For five matches, including the one against the formidable South Africans, the Indian bowlers surpassed expectations. On Saturday and the weak and wobbly Zimbabweans thrashed them all around the park.
Ravichandran Ashwin (1/75) and Ravindra Jadeja (0/71) suffered the most.
It was ironical that Taylor scored a couple of firsts in his last innings. He became the first Zimbabwean to score back-to-back centuries in the World Cup and also the first from his country to aggregate over 400 runs in an edition of the quadrennial event.
But even then, it wasn't a happy ending for him. Not all fictions have happy endings.