India’s T20I Team Emerges As Greatest Ever With Back-To-Back World Cup Dominance
· Free Press Journal
From an Indian cricket fan’s perspective, these are heady times in the sport as the country’s T20I team retained their ICC Men’s T20 World Cup title after a scintillating performance against a high-quality New Zealand side in the final in Ahmedabad on March 8. For a nation that has been long starved of consistent sporting success in the global arena for decades, cricket has been the only team sport where India has made its mark at the world level since the historic 1983 Prudential World Cup victory under the captaincy of the legendary Kapil Dev.
India’s journey in global cricket
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That epic 1983 World Cup win was followed two years later by another global title victory at the Benson and Hedges World Championship of Cricket in Australia, and, thereafter, India haven’t looked back, although the next ODI World Cup victory for the country would come 28 years later in the year 2011, when the ‘Men in Blue’ would lift the trophy under Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s captaincy in Mumbai.
However, India were never known historically to be a team that dominated, ruled, and defined an era just like the great, world-beating West Indies teams of the 1970s and 1980s or the invincible Australian side of the late 1990s to late 2000s remarkably did.
Dominance of past great teams
Those West Indian and Australian teams were ruthless in both Test and limited-overs cricket during the eras they, respectively, lorded over in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s.
Under Clive Lloyd’s helmsmanship, the Windies pulverised teams with their fearsome pace battery, comprising the dangerous Michael Holding, Joel Garner, Andy Roberts, and Malcolm Marshall, and they inflicted damage on teams all through the mid-70s, winning the 1975 and 1979 World Cups as if it were a stroll in the park, only to be stopped by India in their seemingly unstoppable run at Lord’s on June 25, 1983.
The West Indies were a fairly dominant side even under Richie Richardson until 1995, when they lost a Test series to Australia, which signalled a shift in the power dynamics and hierarchy of world cricket on the field at that time.
The Australians then emerged as the undisputed world champion side, especially after they clinched the 1999 World Cup in England. It was the beginning of the reign of the Aussies for a decade or so, with them winning three World Cups consecutively, starting with the 1999 edition under Steve Waugh’s captaincy and then Ricky Ponting continuing their immaculate run through the 2003 and 2007 World Cups, respectively.
It must also be remembered that Australia were also on a 15-match Test win streak, leading up to the now-iconic Kolkata Test at the Eden Gardens in 2001 against India, which the Sourav Ganguly-led side won in incredible fashion after following on and the unforgettable 376-run partnership between Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman.
India’s T20I dominance in recent years
Coming to the present, this Indian T20I team’s unparalleled world domination in cricket’s shortest format for the last two years, after the 2024 T20 World Cup victory, has undoubtedly and unequivocally made them the Greatest of All Time (GOAT) in the format. The transition in captaincy from Rohit Sharma to Suryakumar Yadav only made India a more potent force in the T20I landscape, especially after the 2026 T20 World Cup, their third T20 World Cup title.
India’s supreme dominance at the ICC tournaments since the 2023 ODI World Cup final loss to Australia in Ahmedabad is mind-boggling. They have only lost two matches in three ICC events, the only other defeat coming in the Super Eight stage of the recently concluded edition, where they lost to South Africa at the Narendra Modi Stadium.
Aggressive strategy and batting firepower
The ultra-aggressive batting template that Gautam Gambhir has inculcated in the team, beginning with the opening combination of Abhishek Sharma and Sanju Samson to Ishan Kishan at No. 3 to the power-packed middle order of skipper Suryakumar Yadav, Tilak Varma, Hardik Pandya, and Shivam Dube, has made it a team full of six-hitters. The philosophy of going bang-bang all the way in the powerplay overs has reaped rich dividends for India, with the T20 World Cup final in Ahmedabad against New Zealand being the best example, where the Indian openers, Samson and Abhishek, hammered the New Zealand bowlers for 92 runs in the first six overs.
High Risk-High Reward has been Gambhir’s and Surya’s go-to policy, and their thinking has been highly influenced by the theory of ratcheting up scores of 250-plus and going after the bowling with that intent, and that is exactly what India did in the semi-final and final of the World Cup against England and New Zealand, respectively.
Key performances and turning points
The margin of defeat against England was a mere seven runs, but a score of 254 at the Wankhede on that night cushioned India into the final, with the English failing to deliver that last push which was required. Perhaps, in a way, proving Gambhir and Suryakumar’s thought process to be right, as the 250-plus scores put the opposition under tremendous pressure to keep up with the required run rate from ball one.
What has been heartening to see from an Indian perspective is the coming to fruition of the unquestionable talent of Sanju Samson at the biggest stage and him delivering the goods at the most critical stages for India. Samson’s 97 against the West Indies in a virtual quarterfinal in Kolkata, 89 against England in the semifinal in Mumbai, and 89 again in the final against New Zealand have turned his career around and provided India a brand-new certified match winner. It’s also a reflection of Gambhir’s outlook as the head coach, as he and Suryakumar were on the same page when it came to bringing Samson back into the mix after he was initially kept out of the plans in the group stages.
The humiliating defeat against South Africa in Ahmedabad perhaps served as a wake-up call at the most opportune time to bring the power hitter from Thiruvananthapuram and blood him for India at the business end of the tournament, and boy, did he deliver, and how! This is India’s time in white-ball cricket, as they are currently holders of two white-ball ICC titles, the Champions Trophy and the T20 World Cup, and will also have a unique opportunity to hold all three simultaneously when they head to South Africa next year to play the ODI World Cup in the Rainbow Nation.
The writer is the Sports Editor of FPJ.