Ahmedabad: India’s white-ball cricket was at its lowest phase at the 2021 and 2022 T20 World Cups. Having failed to get out of their group in the UAE, they were bulldozed by England in the semi-finals next edition, losing by 10 wickets in the semi-finals in Adelaide. The eventual winners went past the 169-run target set by India with four overs to spare.
India’s inaugural T20 World Cup triumph in 2007 led to the launch of the Indian Premier League. But it took the back-to-back setbacks to finally jettison a conservative batting approach and embrace the all-out attacking philosophy that league cricket embodied.
Lessons learnt from the T20 World Cup setbacks hastened a limited-over revamp that took India to within one win of the 2023 ODI World Cup. Since then India have become the white-ball powerhouse, winning the 2024 and 2026 T20 World Cups, and the 2025 Champions Trophy. They also bagged last year’s T20 Asia Cup.
As India bask in the glory of their latest triumph, the 96-run victory over New Zealand in the final on Sunday—after scoring 255, the highest total in a final—shows how far they have come to dominate white-ball cricket. Be it at home or in conditions not too different from that in the 2024 competition in the USA and the Caribbean, India seemed to have surged well ahead of their main rivals.
Home to the game’s most competitive T20 league, India have become a T20 powerhouse over the course of four years. With 90,000 fans in their corner in Ahmedabad, India’s win against the Kiwis made them the first team to win back-to-back T20 World Cups—winning 17 out of 18 matches in this journey. Only South Africa have challenged them along the way; first in the close 2024 final and then handing them their only loss this time in the Super 8s.
Title wins are defined by scaling the big moments and India did that better than others. Some key figures have contributed to these wins. Importantly, all of them are relatively young and well-versed with the pulse of today’s cricket.
Rohit Sharma was the losing captain in 2022 and kept the job to turn the tide two years later. In both these T20 World Cup campaigns, Rahul Dravid was head coach, having previously overseen pathway programmes at A and U19 levels. When Suryakumar Yadav replaced Rohit, Gautam Gambhir came in as head coach with VVS Laxman now handling the pathway. Ajit Agarkar has been the chief selector in both of India’s T20 World Cup wins.
However, being home to IPL alone doesn’t make a winning team. With all the commercial riders to make the league work, it has become a variant of T20I cricket with the Impact Player rule and foreign players.
India’s squads in the last two World Cups were picked based on conditions, independent of some of the metrics used in IPL. India’s playing template in the latest win—batting until No.8, a high-intent top order, having left-right batters at the crease after starting with three left-handers at the top, and a variety of spinners and power-hitters to pick from—was an improvement on the 2024 squad.
No other squad in the tournament was as complete. Of course, no one else also had Jasprit Bumrah, to apply the brakes on scoring or pick wickets.
India hit the most sixes (106) in the competition with Player of the Tournament Sanju Samson leading with 24. Bumrah had the best economy rate (6.21) and emerged the joint highest wicket-taker (14) with Varun Chakravarthy.
Challenges ahead
As a nation celebrates, the Indian team management’s attention will now turn to extending this success to the ODI format. India won on more familiar Dubai pitches in the Champions Trophy, but replicating title success in foreign conditions can truly help India’s band of achievers to build a white-ball dynasty.
With the 2027 World Cup to be played in South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe, the pitch conditions, potency of the opposition fast bowlers and the bounce that will both challenge the batsmen and reduce the effectiveness of spinners must all be taken into consideration.
The 2028 T20 World Cup is in Australia and New Zealand. There is also the big one outside the ICC framework—the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics where cricket makes a comeback in the T20 format.
“It has been a wonderful journey in the last one month. It didn’t start the way we wanted it to, but then it’s part of the sport,” skipper Suryakumar said. “The next goal is the Olympic gold and also the T20 World Cup that year.”
Shubman Gill will take charge of the ODI World Cup run. After not making it to the side for the T20 World Cup, he will have extra motivation as he works closely with Gambhir.
The India coach though didn’t want to get carried away by the T20 success.
“I won’t talk about white-ball cricket (dominance) because we’ve lost two out of the last three series in ODI format,” he said on Sunday. “ICC events are a different ball game. The pressure is different. But I don’t believe in eras. You have to turn up every day. Whichever match you’re playing for your country, you want to win each and every game.”
