As the Free Press Journal celebrates its 96th anniversary, the sporting highlight of the year 2024 thus far, will have to undoubtedly be cricket with India’s epic T20 World Cup victory in Barbados under the captaincy of Rohit Sharma.
Team India have been performing impressively at ICC events for the last couple of years reaching the finals of the ICC World Test Championship 2023 and the ODI World Cup but the all-important trophy kept eluding them.
ODI World Cup Journey
The ODI World Cup especially saw the Indian cricket team go on an absolute rampage winning 10 games in a row up until the final only to come up short against the perennial nemesis Australia.
At the cauldron of the Narendra Modi Stadium, with 130,000 people in attendance including the Prime Minister of India, the Indian team struggled against the relentless Aussie pace attack led by skipper Pat Cummins as they posted a below par score of 240.
Travis Head summoned his inner beast on the grandest of stages with a sparkling 137 taking the Indian bowlers apart as the five-time World Champions clinched their sixth title with seven overs to spare.
It was a performance that stunned a partisan crowd present to witness what could have been India’s third ODI World Cup crown but which was not to be.
The Knockout Hurdle
The defeat again opened a can of worms about India’s inability to cross the final hurdle and emerge victorious in knockout matches at major ICC events.
They had lost in the 2015 and 2019 ODI World Cup semifinals as well to Australia and New Zealand as well but this time they found themselves unstuck in the summit clash.
Rahul Dravid’s tenure as head coach had come to an end with the World Cup final loss and it seemed that Dravid would walk away into the sunset trophyless as a player and coach at the senior level.
Now, one does know in hindsight that it was a timely call and convincing from captain Rohit Sharma that stopped Dravid from going away.
Road to the T20 World Cup Final
In the Super Eights, they got the better of a talented Afghanistan team, that created history by making it to the semifinals, before putting it past Bangladesh and Australia without much of a sweat.
Rohit was in impeccable form against Australia taking one Mitchell Starc over for 29 runs with four sixes and a four coming off the gun Aussie pacer.
It was a stunning assault from the Indian captain.
Key Performances in the Final
Jasprit Bumrah, Virat Kohli and Hardik Pandya all played stellar roles in the summit clash against South Africa which went down all the way to the wire.
Bumrah’s death-overs bowling was what eventually saved India’s cause when it seemed Heinrich Klaasen at one point was bludgeoning the Indian bowling to all corners of the ground.
Bumrah had scalped 15 wickets in eight matches to win the Player of the Tournament Award.
A Fairy Tale Victory
Suryakumar Yadav’s name will be etched in history as the man who perhaps astonishingly latched onto the most important catch of the tournament with his acrobatics to end David Miller’s innings off the first ball of the final over of South Africa’s innings with them needing 16 off 6 balls.
Some scripts are written better than fairytales and India’s soul-stirring win in Barbados is one of them.
