Part 3 - How did India win the 2024 T20 World Cup

Not a one-man army (for once!)

To those watching the 2024 T20 World Cup, Virat Kohli had clearly disappointed throughout the tournament. It was only in the final, in which the big man turned up in typical fashion and played a matured innings of 76 runs filled with a proper mix of defense and attack. Despite being the Player of the Match in the final, his stats in this WC were underwhelming: an average of 18.87 runs at a strike rate of 112.68. For more avid cricket watchers, though, it isn’t a mystery that Virat Kohli is perhaps the greatest ever T20 WC batsman of all time. Contrary to the impression he offered this WC, he leads the all-time run-scoring charts for the T20 WC with a stunning average of 58.72 and a total aggregate of 1292 runs (fun fact: if we don’t include the 2024 WC, his average would have been 81.50!). An unfortunate fact behind these near-godly statistics is that Kohli has been alone in scoring runs in many crucial matches, and on the rare occasion that he didn’t score high, the team tended to lose that match. 

Let’s take a trip back in time to the 2016 T20 WC. It wouldn’t be blunt at all to say that the India batting had completely flopped that tournament. Virat Kohli, though, was a different story. He had amassed 273 runs in a scarcely believable 5 innings, 3 of them being 50+ scores. He struck at a strike rate of 146.77 (aka 146.77 runs for every 100 balls), demonstrating his incredible ability to strike quickly when needed. He practically spearheaded the batting that tournament himself, being the 2nd highest scorer of that WC. In fact, the level to which no other batsman had performed that WC was astounding: MS Dhoni, the then-captain of the side, was the next-highest scorer for India that WC with 89 runs, and ranked as the 36th highest run scorer that tournament. Rohit Sharma was 37th with 88 runs, and so on. This meant that even in the Top 35 run scorers, only Kohli was there, demonstrating just how much Kohli carried the batting lineup that tournament. Sure, you could pull off games with a matchwinner like Kohli, but for how long? In the 2 matches where Kohli did not do as well, India either lost in a humiliating manner (Example: IND lost to NZ by 47 runs in a low chase of 127; in this match, Kohli only could manage 23 runs) or scraped through by the skin of their teeth (Example: IND beat Bangladesh by just 1 run while defending a low score of 146, in which Kohli scored 24 runs). However, whenever Kohli played brilliantly, it was always a comprehensive victory, such as in the quarterfinal against Australia where Kohli took down the Aussie bowlers with incredible skills, scoring an unbeaten 82. So, when it came to the semifinal matchup versus the West Indies, most hopes of making it to the finals laid on Kohli. 

The openers Rohit and Ajinkya scored 43 and 40 respectively, but by the way that Kohli had played that day demonstrated that Rahane, for example, was most definitely not at his best. The pitch offered little to no help to bowlers, with most bowlers being hammered by Kohli and finishing with expensive figures. Rahane, though, was not able to get going as much, and rather struggled a bit to accelerate the inning, which he probably should have due to the length of the Indian lineup. For example, rather than scoring 192, India could’ve had another 15-20 runs had they been a bit more risky and willing to lose a couple more wickets. On a free-flowing pitch such as this (especially against power-hitters like the West Indies team), risk was necessary, but other than Kohli (and Rohit a bit), no one had stepped out of their crease and taken the attack to the West Indians. Eventually, when the bowling innings came around, India was smacked around by Johnson Charles, Andre Russell, and Lendl Simmons. The bowlers were very erratic that day, and bowled a few no-balls on wicket-taking deliveries (such as where Simmons was caught out, but bowler Hardik Pandya had overstepped the bowling crease, thus nullifying the delivery and giving the batter a “free hit”). In fact, Kohli too was brought on to get a breakthrough wicket, which he did, despite being a specialist batsman. The extent to which Kohli headed the team that tournament was demonstrated through how the team always had to go back to him to bail them out of trouble, and sooner or later, that rope had run its course.

TL;DR, Kohli was the only player that stood up for India, and eventually, the lack of contributions from both batting and bowling paved the way for their semifinal exit.

This was what happened when only one man was going through an incredible purple patch. What happens in a team where one person isn’t in blazing hot form, but everyone is holding their own and doing their part? You get a better and more balanced team.