Champions Again: A Fan’s Catharsis After India’s 2024 T20 World Cup Triumph

The world is healing. There's background music being continuously played. I feel like dancing and singing my heart out....

Okay, enough of the melodramatic stuff. But hey, this is the stuff dreams are made of. India has won an ICC trophy after 11 years. A World Cup in any format after 13 years and a T20 World Cup after 17 years. I think I deserve a release after all those years of anguish. The last time I saw an Indian team lift a trophy was in the newspaper and highlights of the Champions Trophy. I couldn't see it live as it was already past midnight, and the match did not look like it would begin after the rain. The next day, the newspaper was filled with the team looking dashing in their white coats, highlights showing Dhoni jumping behind the stumps as Ashwin's ball spun away from that bald England spinner. The last time I watched an Indian team lift an ICC trophy live was the 2011 World Cup. It's the year I started watching cricket when my parents thought that at least this was better than a cartoon. Saw Sachin being lifted on his shoulders, Harbhajan and Sreesanth hugging :), Dhoni in a bear hug with Yuvraj after having scolded him throughout the partnership, Gary Kirsten shouting from the balcony, and the lifting of the trophy shaped like a ball(Maybe the reason why they say batsmen win you matches and bowlers win you tournaments). Pardon me if my details are wrong, I'm just writing based on memory and not fact-checking since this piece is not about accurate cricket facts but rather the unbridled passion of a young cricket fan. 

Since then, cricket has changed, and so have I. From a shy little nerd who had a few close friends, struggling to express what he thought, to the guy who mingles easily with people and still has a few close friends :). The night of 29 June 2024, I let out a roar so loud, my friends, whom I had made recently, would have thought that this was the guy who doesn't hesitate in saying what he thinks. Little do they know that it was the voice of that shy little dude from all those years ago who had suffered years of heartbreak and anguish and bore them silently within him all these years. Today, for a few hours, that shy little nerdy dude wants to express his emotions through the current me, so here it is.

The past decade or so has been difficult, and I won't sugarcoat it. In 2014, Sangakkara got a farewell retirement, whereas cancer survivor Yuvi Paaji was made the scapegoat. In 2015, even with a weak pace battery and having lost to Australia on the tour just before that, although we reached the semi-finals, the team was crucified for being mercilessly beaten by Australia. I still remember Manish Pandey hitting a six in Sydney in that Australia series before the World Cup. In 2016, there was one man who deserved the trophy more than anyone else: Virat Kohli. We'll take a detour for a while and then come back to my anguish.

Growing up, I idolised MSD. I did not get to watch Sachin play live much since 2011, other than older match highlights and stuff. I still remember seeing a special after Sachin's retirement where experts discussed how Sachin used to play the straight drive with a jab, such that his hands used to move up rather than flow in a pendulum motion like most batsmen do. This ensured he could hit awkward length balls, which are swinging with just that jab, and the bowler would be left wondering what he did wrong.

Dhoni, for me, was someone I wanted to be at that time. I used to get angry at the slightest provocation and automatically cry due to the heat from that anger in my eyes. (That's probably why I have such high eye power now, but let's blame the TV.) His calmness in pressure situations, no matter if we won or lost, was something magical. He showed you can do magical things if you keep your emotions in check and let your adversaries fear you. I started playing as a wicketkeeper batsman at 6 to emulate my idol. This continued for a few years until King Kohli and India's Test ascendancy began.

Kohli initially appeared to me as a young, undisciplined dude whose focus was not cricket. The talent was there from the 35 seen in the World Cup final, but India is a country where there's no shortage of talent in cricket. Much like engineering exams, millions of kids can take your place any day. My perception of him went to a low when he flipped off the Australian crowd in the 2011 series when we were losing the test and they were sledging him. It was in stark contrast to what my idol Dhoni symbolised, and here was a young unbrash lad tarnishing India's image. India also lost a home series against England in 2012, and it was the lowest point of Indian test cricket at the time.

This all changed in 2014. In the Australia series of 2014, Kohli, after a horrific tour of England, almost won us 2 games by his own. Scorecards don't often show the whole story. These days, you get Instagram reels of a young Virat Kohli staring down the Aussie bowlers in the eye while expressing his emotions to the fullest. For someone like me, it was yet again a magical moment. Although we lost the series completely "brownwashed"(as it was called in the papers), I sensed that VK is here to stay. He became the Indian test captain after that, and Indian cricket changed forever.

There was a tectonic shift happening in Indian cricket. Under Dhoni, calmness was required to handle tough pressure situations in white ball cricket. But Kohli believed that being yourself on the field delivered similar results, no matter the situation. For him, it was not about winning or losing but about having self-respect no matter the situation. It changed as some players used their emotions to get the job done, and some who were silent but equally competitive. Fast bowlers began to flourish under Kohli, especially since you need that adrenaline rush to hurl a ball at 140+ speed. It made India one of the strongest Test teams, along with an already strong white-ball setup.

The pinnacle of Test Cricket was reached when India beat Australia in Australia in 2018. However, India's white-ball fortunes had taken a downturn. We lost the 2014 WT20 final against Sri Lanka, were knocked out in the 2016 T20 World Cup semi-finals due to nerves and lost a Champions Trophy final against our arch rivals. The worst part about these losses was not the fact that we lost, but that there was no fight despite playing our best cricket throughout the tournament. It was simply a lack of concentration and nerves which caused this issue. India seemed to win bilateral series easily, but always faltered in multi-nation tournaments. It slowly led to the rise of the chokers tag for Team India.

Among all the India greats, it would be a shame if I did not mention Rohit Sharma. Rohit has played for India since 2007 as an in-and-out guy for the Indian team. This all changed when he was promoted to opener during the 2013 season. The runs started racking up, especially in that 7-match ODI series against Australia(which was 5 matches since two matches got washed out due to rain). I still remember the mammoth 350+ chases by Virat and Rohit, Faulkner winning a 300+ chase for Australia, and India prevailing in the series 3-2, ending with a Rohit Sharma double century, the first of many :).

I liked Rohit Sharma, but I hated the fan base. Fan bases in India for players get extremely toxic and irrational. People can have a favourite player without hating on other players, but real cricket fans never do that. You can be disappointed when a player is not performing, but you don't go all out and abuse them, threaten their families, etc. This also happens in football, and some people dare to call it passion.  You can be passionate without being a jerk to people and without hurling personal remarks against them. It's something which will always exist in sports, and sportsmen have their own way of dealing with it. It's much better now that people are punished if they do such stuff, and that's the way it should be.

Back to cricket, India's woes also continued in the 2019 World Cup. The Ambati Rayudu fiasco with Vijay Shankar, along with an unstable middle order, did not look like it would cross the group stage at least on paper. But hey, then again, India is always a different beast when it comes to multination tournaments. Apart from that one loss against England in the 2019 group stage, India bossed around in the World Cup, defeating their opponents comprehensively. Then came that famed run-out of MS Dhoni in a rain-affected India vs New Zealand match, which broke the hearts of a billion Indians that day. 

After the heartbreaking loss to New Zealand in the 2019 World Cup and, of course, the drama of the final of the England vs New Zealand game, it became sort of a monotonous schedule. India would go on to boss around Test series, ODI series, and T20I series, but they would always be given the "choker" style in the context of multi-nation tournaments like the World Cups. It reached a crescendo when India actually lost a T20 World Cup match against Pakistan. For the first time across so many years and across so many matches, India had been defeated by Pakistan in a World Cup game. It also led to a point where India failed to reach the semi-finals of the tournament, and the fans, as well as the media, criticised the team. "This is just a bilateral winning series team and not a trophy-winning team," they said. 

People and the media also sometimes would start hating on the IPL and other domestic tournaments, saying they don't produce match winners enough, like Australia and England do in those times.The same England that had lost the 2016 T20 World Cup final and had been knocked out by Bangladesh in 2015. Funny how a World Cup win, even on boundary count, can change the narrative. It was a dark period for Indian cricket, and they even failed to make an impact in the 2022 T20 World Cup as well. 

Then came the 2023 India World Cup again in India after almost 12 years. This was a chance for Rohit Sharma, the captain, to win a World Cup on home soil, the World Cup which he had missed due to his inconsistency almost 12 years ago. It was the first time in years that he had a real chance to enjoy the moment that his teammate Virat Kohli had enjoyed all those years ago.

 India's run in the 2023 World Cup campaign was nothing short of a dream run. They were winning matches from difficult situations, had all the players contributing, and it looked like, for the first time in years, there was a real chance for the team to win. The team again had a semi-final against New Zealand, where there was a huge run-scoring fest between the two teams, and ultimately, India had outplayed New Zealand. Their opponents, Australia, in the final had come off a vastly different campaign. Australia had huffed and puffed to reach the finals, one of the most famous wins coming against Afghanistan as a result. But as you know, Australia is a different beast when it comes to the World Cup knockouts, and that is what India felt on that fated day in November. 

The final became one-sided. India did not look like the team that had won all the group matches comprehensively. It felt like they had given up mentally in that match, and Australia was able to win that match even before having to play the second innings.

Which is why the 2024 win feels more surreal. India would go on to win the Champions Trophy and the Women's World Cup by the time I post this. The team had finally broken the jinx, or as we say in India, got the Betaal off their back when it comes to that final hurdle in World Cups.