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T20 World Cup: When Indian supremacy reflected even in individual performances
Individual performances combined with team work carried India through in the T20 World Cup.
Cricket legends like MS Dhoni, Michael Vaughan, Mithali Raj and Adam Gilchrist led the tributes for Rohit Sharma's side following their T20 win. / X/@T20WorldCup
When the Indian cricket team was crowned with the T20 World Cup title on June.29, every person of Indian origin, irrespective of his place of domicile, felt proud as if he or she had been the winner. Such is the spirit associated and identified with success at the global level.
After Hardik Pandya bowled his sixth and last ball of the third over to give India a splendid and historic win over South Africa by seven runs, the global Indians burst into celebrations. Music, dance, fireworks, and victory processions hoisting tricolors dotted the globe. Experts, players, and fans of the game “hailed this victory that Men in Blue snatched from the jaws of a certain defeat.” The team spirit was emancipated by brilliant individual performances that scripted success on the playfield of Kingston Oval in Barbados.
India has been doing well in cricket. Last year it made it to the finals of World Cups in both Tests and ODIs. Unfortunately, it lost both to Australia. It was the third World Cup final in its shortest and the latest format in which it triumphed. Incidentally, India earned the distinction of making the World Cup finals in all three formats.
Led by Rohit Sharma, the Indian team emerged unscathed from the grueling 55-match marquee event held jointly by the USA and West Indies. It won all its games except for the one against Canada which was abandoned without a single ball bowled. India enjoyed complete supremacy. Some members of the winning team figured high on the outstanding individual performance lists.
Pacer Jasprit Bumrah was not only the toast of Indian success but was also declared man of the tournament. He claimed 15 wickets in 8 games. His performance came with appreciation from all the Cricket Pundits. He was described as extraordinarily outstanding. He was lethal, accurate and economical, a rare quality enjoyed by select pace bowlers. Overall, he shared the second-best haul spot as the top spot was shared by his young teammate Arshdeep Singh and Afghanistan's Fazalhaq Farooqi (17 wickets each).
In the pace bowling department, he was well supported by young Arshdeep Singh of Mohali. Arshdeep finished at the top of the list of bowlers claiming the maximum wickets in the tournament. He had a rich haul of 17 wickets. Though Fazalhaq Faroogi of Afghanistan also had 17 wickets, Arshdeep’s performance became noticeable as he was new to this level of competitive cricket. His best haul of 4 for 9 was also rated among the five best individual performances in the tournament.
India has a long history of producing the best spinners in the world. There was a time when this South Asian nation had the best spin trio comprising BS Chandrasekhar, EAS Prasanna and Bishan Bedi. Before them was Jassu Patel who created a record when he had the powerful Kangaroos struggling against spinning tosses at Kanpur. Then there was S Venkatraghvan, a great exponent of spin bowling. Then came Maninder Singh and Harbhajan Singh. Following the footsteps of great stalwarts, the present Indian team has some of the best spin bowlers in R Ashwin, Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel, Yajuvendra Chahal and even Ravindra Jadeja.
Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel and Ravinder Jadeja bowled their spinners well in the 2024 T20 World Cup.
Skipper Rohit Sharma, who announced his retirement from this shortest format of cricket after the World Cup triumph, was also the second-best highest scorer of the tournament. He made 257 in eight games he played. The topper was Rahmanullah Gurbaz of Afghanistan, who scored 281 from the same number of games.
Rohit Sharma’s highest of 92 was the third best after Nicholas Pooran (West Indies 98) and Aaron Jones (USA 94).
Rohit also had three 50s to his credit and shared the top spot with Rahmanullah Gurbaz. Rohit Sharma finished number two behind Travis Head of Australia in hitting boundaries. While Travis had 41 boundaries, including 26 sixes, Rohit had 39, including 15 sixes.
Virat Kohli, who was declared man of the match in the final, made 76 in his last T20I innings before saying goodbye to this format.
Other batters who did well for India throughout the tournament, included Suryakumar Yadav, who had two 50s to his credit, Shivam Dube, and wicketkeeper-batsman Rishabh Pant. Suryakumar Yadav would be long remembered for his stupendous catch that dismissed David Miller off Hardik Pandya to convert defeat into victory for India in the gold medal match.
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