India fly high as Kiwis fall

Ahmedabad: SuryakumarYadav’s team, easily India’s greatest T20 outfit ever, created history on Sunday with an unprecedented third World Cup win, clinically demolishing a lacklustre New Zealand by 96 runs with an awe-inspiring batting performance and laser-precise bowling.

Suryakumar’s men became the first men’s international team to win successive World T20 titles and also the first to claim the trophy on home turf.

Sanju Samson (89 off 46 balls) and Abhishek Sharma (52 off 21 balls) added 92 in Powerplay and 98 for the opening stand after a tactical blunder by Black Caps skipper Mitchell Santner led to a record score of 255 for 5.

Having misread the pitch, Santner brought medium pacer Jacob Duffy dropping the useful off-spinner Cole McConchie, which proved to be decisive in the final outcome. In-front of 86,000 fans, the chase was out of question as New Zealand huffed and puffed its way to 159 all out as Suryakumar, the man from Mumbai’s Chembur, etched his name alongside Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Rohit Sharma in the record books.

No credit will be enough for mostly under-fire Gautam Gambhir, who became the first coach to guide the team to two T20 World titles.

Following the demolition act with the bat, Jasprit Bumrah’s artistry was good enough to dash any little hopes that New Zealand players might just have harboured at the back of their minds.

Bumrah was unreal as ever with figures of 4-0-15-4, adding to the mythical story of his career which will become folklore in years to come. As far-fetched as it might sound, the current Indian T20 team under Gambhir’s coaching has had the aura of USA’s ‘Dream Team’ filled with the biggest of NBA stars like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird that won the 1992 Barcelona Olympics gold medal.

Just like that team, this Indian T20 outfit, filled with IPL’s richest stars, has an air of invincibility around it. The side never seemed like losing the tournament in which it was the runaway favourite even before a ball had been bowled.

If the 2007 T20 World Cup victory was a watershed moment for Indian cricket, which gave birth to a behemoth like the IPL, the 2024 T20 World Cup win was a soothing balm to the heartbreak of the 2023 ODI World Cup final loss.

Brief Scores:

India: 255 for 5 in 20 overs. (Sanju Samson 89, Ishan Kishan 54, Abhishek Sharma 52; James Neesham 3/46) beat New Zealand: 159 all out in 19 overs. (Tim Seifert 52, J Bumrah 4/15, Axar Patel 3/23) by 96 runs.