India’s win in the T20 World Cup at Barbados on June 29, 2024, is now a month old today and the way people celebrated it online shows how much excitement there is around the country concerning India’s second shortest format World Cup triumph.
They defeated South Africa in the Bridgetown finals by seven runs to lift the World cup after being unbeaten throughout an eight match run.
Virat Kohli (76 off 59 balls) and Axar Patel (47 off 31 balls) were instrumental in posting a competitive total of 176 for 7, while South Africa required one run per ball from last five overs for victory with Heinrich Klaasen scoring a whirlwind half-century.
However, Hardik Pandya came back strongly during his second spell and dismissed the dangerous Klaasen (52 off 27) and David Miller (21 off 17), who would have otherwise taken away this game from India.
Suryakumar Yadav has definitely played a major role in getting Miller’s wicket when he took an unbelievable catch at deep backward square leg boundary to turn this game in India’s favour.
Hardik then got his third wicket as he dismissed Kagiso Rabada, which signified that India had won. In between these heroics of Hardik, Jasprit Bumrah ‘Player of Tournament’(2 for 18) as well as left-arm pacer Arshdeep Singh(2 for 20) kept up pressure until the end of their run chase against South Africans.
Immediately after their victory over Australia, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli announced they will no longer play T20 internationals. The team was given a memorable welcome home where hundreds of thousands lined Mumbai streets during open-top bus parade held to celebrate champions’ victory that ended with felicitation ceremony at Wankhede Stadium.
It’s still early days since that happened a month ago with Indians keeping the fire burning in some of the posts on X (formerly Twitter). See for yourself.
This victory represented India’s first International Cricket Council (ICC) title in 11 years since lifting the Champions Trophy in 2013.
Furthermore, India took seventeen years to win another T20 World Cup after MS Dhoni’s team accomplished it first during its inaugural edition held in 2007.
However, this historic win also saw Rahul Dravid stepping down as head coach of team India while Gautam Gambhir, his former teammate was named as his successor only a few days later.
