Published: Sep 24, 2015, 15:00 IST    Updated: Sep 24, 2015, 15:11 IST

This Day, That Year: How A Young Indian Team Won The World Cup And Revolutionized T20 In India

A Young Indian Team Won T

The year is 2007, barely five months after the debacle in the 50-Over World Cup in West Indies, the selectors search for answers in what is the worst phase in the history of Indian cricket. The seniors are growing older by the day with few big retirements imminent and on the way, the younger players are not adept to taking so much responsibility and the bowling department looks as thin as it ever was.

The internal meeting of the selectors ends with a unanimous decision that Zonal selections would be scrapped and players would be selected solely based on the requirements of the squad and the future development plan for the team.

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Many senior players come out in support of this new policy and in order to bring forth new talent the likes of Tendulkar, Dravid and others announce, that they won’t be taking part in the upcoming inaugural T20 World Cup. The chief selector, Dilip Vengsarkar asks for Tendulkar’s guidance to appoint a new captain and Sachin recommends Mahendra Singh Dhoni above Yuvraj and Gambhir.

Under the new captain, the team flies for South Africa looking to make an impression and at least make it to the knockout stages to restore some faith in the Indian cricket team. The new captain in the pre-match press conferences stresses on the importance of taking small steps and working on the plans for each team and each game, which would become his stock philosophy in years to come.

The new team was without any baggage of past failures and the new captain had everything to prove, having been thrown at the deep end unexpectedly at the last moment. Therefore, with nobody looking over their shoulders for great results, the team made all efforts to put in their best on the field.

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The league stage turned out to be a real cliffhanger as the second match with Pakistan ended in a tie and India won the bowl out for their first win of the tournament. The team makes it to the Super 8 and is placed in Group E along with New Zealand, South Africa and England.

At that particular moment in the tournament, the cricket fan in each of us wanted the team to make it past this stage somehow, but each and every one of us knew that it was nothing but wishful thinking. The team had done this much without any major hiccups was good news for the selectors.

As expected, the team faltered in the first game of the Super 8 losing to New Zealand but the fighting spirit was there for all to be seen. India lost the match but made a herculean effort to chase down the massive target of 190 set by New Zealand, falling short by just 10 runs in the end.

The next match was a do-or-die game for the Indian team. Lose and pack your bags for Mumbai or win and live to fight another day was the clear message by Lalchand Rajput, the Indian team manager. The game with England turned out to be one of the iconic moments for the young Indian star Yuvraj Singh as he replied in kind to the sledging Stuart Broad, hitting him for six 6s in an over.

The Indian team posts the highest score of the tournament and signals intent.

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After winning the game against England, the Indian team makes noise for the first time in the tournament and the opponents take note. The next game against South Africa is a virtual Quarter-Final for the young team. The underdogs turned the tables on the favorites and what was expected to be a good contest turned into a one-sided affair as India won convincingly against the hosts.

High on confidence and a team which looked unstoppable, the Indians looked set to breach the Australian fort. After the game against South Africa, Dhoni had said, “We all believed that we will do it and that’s what matters, if you believe you can do it and you put your mind to do it, most of the times you will do it”. This is exactly what the team believed in the game against Australia. After beating the ‘Numero Uno’ team in the Semi-Finals, India awaited Pakistan for the final at Wanderers, Johannesburg.

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India hadn’t lost a single game to Pakistan in the World Cups and Dhoni and his men knew that fact by heart. The stadium was chock-a-block with sub-continental fans and the occasion weighed down on both the teams as they took center-stage just months after being knocked-out in the league stages of the 50-Over world cup. India put up a respectable score of 157 for Pakistan and that infamous Misbah scoop in the last over is still etched in our memory as the sweetest victory over Pakistan at the world cups.

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That a young team with a new captain and a stand-in manager had won the World Cup for India was a story that India needed to hear especially with the onset of economic slowdown and early signs of recession. The year 2007 in many ways turned out to be a landmark year for the Indian cricket team as it started a T20 revolution in India and unfurled the might of Dhoni’s captaincy which would bring many more laurels to this nation in the years to come.