A year to remember for the Men in Blue fans as India’s reign in T20I 2024 was just simply incredible. They have been unbeaten in five bilateral series played this year and won their second Men’s T20 World Cup title in July.
Their journey was no short of controversies though; such as Rohit Sharma and Hardik Pandya’s beef in the IPL 2024 that led to a captaincy fallout and the possibility of Virat Kohli’s exclusion from the T20 World Cup squad due to his poor form.
In this journey, we recap India’s magnificent run throughout the year and how the newcomers have shaped the future of the Indian T20I side.
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India’s Reign in T20I 2024: The Build-up to the T20 World Cup title
It all began when Hardik took Rohit’s place as captain of the Mumbai Indians (MI) in the 2024 Indian Premier League. While many MI supporters found it hard to accept that Rohit, Mumbai’s most successful captain, would no longer be leading the team, Rohit’s followers were infuriated.
At Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium, Pandya was repeatedly mocked. There were intense rumours that Pandya and Sharma were becoming more tense in the Mumbai dressing room.
Hardik Pandya was supposed to lead India in T20Is after Rohit stepped away. But the BCCI decided to replace Pandya with Rohit and announced that the opening batter would lead India in the upcoming tournament.
India began their campaign against Ireland, winning comfortably by eight wickets. The game that they will remember besides the final was against Pakistan. They restricted India to 119 but in return could not chase the target. They had a difficult win against the USA but an abandoned game against Canada saw them qualify for the Super 8s.
In Super 8s, they again went unbeaten following big wins over Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Australia to qualify for the semi-finals. They met England, who defeated them by a brutal 10 wickets in Adelaide two years ago in SF2. Instead, India took their revenge by winning over the defending champions by 68 runs. They qualified for the final for the third time.
In the final, they faced first-time finalists South Africa. Virat Kohli, who scored just 79 runs in seven innings throughout the tournament, stood tall in the final. He scored 79 runs as India posted 176. Bowlers kept South Africa under the radar; eventually, Hardik Pandya defended 16 runs in the final to win by seven runs.
This tournament victory marked India’s end of the 11-year drought of no ICC trophies. It was the first time since the 2013 Champions Trophy that they lifted an ICC Title. In between these 11 years, India played five finals and four semi-finals but could not win, including their magnificent home World Cup which they lost to Australia.
Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma retired from Twenty20 Internationals shortly after winning the tournament. Suryakumar Yadav was announced as Rohit’s successor to lead India in T20I.
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India’s Reign in T20I 2024: Youngsters take over
Apart from their tournament victory, India have played five bilateral series. Two at home against Afghanistan and Bangladesh and three away against Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, and South Africa. In total, they played 18 matches in the series and lost only two; one each against Bangladesh and South Africa.
With the two Super Over victories included, the total win percentage was 92.31. It surpasses Pakistan’s 89.47 victory percentage in 2018, when they won 17 of the 19 games they played, and is the highest win percentage for any team in a calendar year in men’s T20Is.
There were seven individual hundreds, by far the most any team has scored in a calendar year across all Twenty20 cricket. Three scored by Sanju Samson, two by Tilak Varma, and one apiece by Rohit Sharma and Abhishek Sharma.
Every time a century was scored, India reached the 200-run milestone; in fact, they did so nine times this year. Before this, no men’s T20 team has recorded more than seven such totals in a single year. Considering the massive totals, India achieved an overall run rate of 9.55, which is second only to Australia’s 9.87 for a men’s T20I side in a calendar year (minimum of 15 matches).
Young batters like Sanju Samson, Tilak Varma, Shivam Dube, Yash Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, Abhishek Sharma and Rinku Singh were in the top 10 run scorers for India this year and all of them apart from Gill and Dube have SR of 150 and over.
In bowling, Arshdeep Singh was miles ahead of his teammates as he ended the year as India’s highest wicket-taker with 36. Ravi Bishnoi and Axar Patel were the other two who had 20+ wickets this year. Player of the 2024 T20 World Cup Jasprit Bumrah played only the event with 15 wickets.
It is a year that Indian cricket fans will never forget.
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