How Dhoni’s underdogs inspired India’s T20 revolution

From reluctant starters, India became hub of shortest format

Does September 24, 2007 evoke the same degree of romance for an Indian cricket fan as June 25, 1983 (Prudential Cup win) or April 2, 2011 (ICC World Cup)? I am not too sure about it but with another T20 World Cup round the corner in the UAE and Oman, one cannot help but feel that the ragtag Indian squad’s triumph under MS Dhoni in the inaugural edition of the event in South Africa had spawned the biggest revolution in the sport in the new millennium.

Yes, India’s triumph in the 2011 50-overs World Cup at home saw them regain the trophy after 28 years and had it’s own aura.

Allow me to jog the memory a bit - the mandarins of Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) were simply reluctant to send a team for the ambitious ICC experiment of staging a World Cup in the shortest format. That year the star-studded national team, led by Rahul Dravid, failed to cross the league stages of the 50-overs World Cup.

The consensus was eventually to send a so-called second string team for the World T20 by hoisting Dhoni as captain.

The World T20 triumph had the BCCI scurrying for the drawing board to contemplate plans for the city-based franchise league on the lines of the English Premier League. BCCI soon decided to take ownership of the project by taking their active top stars on board and banned the Indian Cricket League (ICL) - a project which had the legendary Kapil Dev as it’s face.

The IPL was born and it soon became evident that the format was set to change the landscape of the game. The ICC, on their part, wanted to milk the success of their new product and ended up hosting back-to-back World Cups in 2009 and 2010.

From reluctant starters, India soon had become the hub of the T20 game. Surely, India’s 2007 triumph played it’s part in the boom that we are witnessing today!