We did it! The T20 World Cup and More

By the end of June 2024, two wonderful things happened in Indian cricket. While most of us rejoiced at our men’s team winning the ICC T20 World Cup, the achievement eclipsed the achievements of our women’s cricket team which was simultaneously making the South African team bite the dust.

Let it be ‘ladies first’ for this article, and more so because many of us may not have followed the remarkable performances of Harmanpreet Kaur and company. Smriti Mandhana was undoubtedly the player of the One Day International three-match series. She scored back to back centuries in the first two ODIs and missed the same by just ten runs in the third outing. While the second ODI finished as a close one despite the Indian team having set up a mountain target of 326 runs for a South African victory, the first and third ODIs failed to see any South African challenge worth the name.

Moving from white ball to white dress cricket, the Indian team was once again on top with the opening pair of Shefali Varma and Smriti putting up a record 292 runs for the opening stand. In the process, the Indian team declared the innings at 603 for 6 wicket; the highest ever total accumulated in any women’s Test match. While Shefali scored a double hundred, Smriti scored a century, once again. However, when the Indian team won the Test by 10 wickets, it was spin bowler, Sneh Rana, who was adjudged as the Player of the Match for bagging 10 wickets. She is only the second Indian player after Jhulam Goswami to have bagged 10 wickets in a Test match.

In men’s cricket the scene was very different. It seemed more than once that the Indian team would lose its T20 encounter. The first such occasion seemed to be against Pakistan but some immaculate bowling by our bowlers coupled with some rash attitude of the Pakistani batters end up with an Indian victory. The danger appeared to be the same even in the title contest against South Africa when the opponents required just 30 runs off 30 deliveries, but just one over from Jasprit Bumrah, a great catch by Suryakumar Yadav despite being under tremendous pressure, followed by a miserly penultimate over of just four runs by Arshdeep, turned the probable result of the match upside down in India’s favour.

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