India won the first-ever ICC World T20 (now T20 World Cup) on this day, 13 years ago.
After losing just once in the Super 8s stage to New Zealand, and beating South Africa and England, India reached the semi-finals. They had to face Australia, who was considered the favourites with the team at their disposal.
But, Yuvraj Singh’s 70 (30) and MS Dhoni’s 36 (18) helped India score 188 and economical spells by Sreesanth and Harbhajan Singh powered them to restrict Australia to 173 and reach the final.
In the final at Johannesburg, India faced their arch-rivals Pakistan. Gautam Gambhir’s innings of 75 runs and Rohit Sharma’s quickfire 30* (16) helped India breach the 150-mark.
Pakistan didn’t really get a good start and Irfan Pathan bowled well to trigger a middle-order collapse. Only, Misbah Ul-Haq stayed till the end just before playing that famous ‘scoop’ in the hands of S Sreesanth to give India a victory.
MS Dhoni, a young captain then, led to the team devoid of experienced stars in the first-ever World T20 competition. The win is still etched in the memories of fans and experts, as it came after the disappointing exit from the World Cup 2007, earlier in March.
Some of the stars of that team reminisce the win they achieved on this day in 2007:
International Cricket Council (ICC), BCCI and cricket experts also joined in, to celebrate the anniversary of the 2007 win, with the final moments from Joginder Sharma’s over.
The success of that tournament was crucial to the start of many T20 leagues around the world, the increased viewership and craze of the T20s at both international and franchise level and also to the following T20 World Cups.
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