(This article was first published on Indialink.com.au and is reproduced with the author’s permission)
At Motera, the T20 final delivers a Bumrah masterclass and a Samson spectacle, sealing India’s rising dominance in T20 cricket.
It is the World Cup final and Jasprit Bumrah is on a hat-trick. Two wickets have been shattered by slow yorkers. The third, incredibly, is a repeat. But this one the new batter manages to keep off his stumps more by luck than design. Bumrah gives a dual shrug of his shoulders, throws a beatific smile towards his captain, and walks back to his mark. This was just a taster. He has more havoc planned.
Bumrah’s yorker is special. Very special. It is delivered, at will, with deadly accuracy, from a release point eighteen inches beyond that of his fellow fast men. With eighteen-feet from release to impact and a stock ball that travels at 140 kilometers per hour, there is little time for a batter to gauge speed or length. Only 20% of the time on average, does he bowl slower deliveries in T20I. But today is different. This is a batting paradise, and there is only one way to avoid being dispatched to the stands by the heavy swinging bats of modern batters – take pace off the ball and deny the bat swing added speed of the ball on impact. So Bumrah turns the playbook on its head and bowls 83% of his deliveries at 120 kilometers per head and lower. Without changing his action or hand speed on delivery. It is a masterclass in fast bowling.
Chasing a nigh impossible 256 to win, thanks to yet another Sanju Samson classic, brutal and sublime at the same time, Bumrah’s 4 for 15 is too much for the Kiwis. At Ahmedabad, under lights and a cloud of expectation, India doesn’t just beat New Zealand, they demolish them by 96 runs. It is the largest victory margin in a T20 World Cup final.
On a day when Mitchell Santner won the toss, and on a pitch expected to be high scoring, bizarrely sent India, the acknowledged batting powerhouse of T20 cricket in to bat, Sanju Samson’s 89 off 46 balls – all wristy insolence and geometric precision, powered his side to 255 for 5, the highest total ever in a T20 World Cup final. By the time Jasprit Bumrah finished tearing through the chase with his four wickets, India had achieved a few firsts – the first team to defend a T20 World Cup title, the first to win at home, and the first to lift the trophy three times, going past West Indies and England.
The Story Started almost 4-years Ago
The real story of Indian cricket’s elevation to these dizzy heights of T20 glory is not about Ahmedabad being a one‑night heist. It is the logical culmination of a project that began under Rahul Dravid and Rohit Sharma, when the team’s think tank originally conceived the idea of complete fearlessness and brutal hitting at a frenetic pace being the key to a sustainable T20I winning strategy. But in 2022, at the top of the batting order, Rohit himself was the only one who walked the talk and batted fearlessly, unafraid of getting dismissed. KL Rahul and Virat Kohli were unable to turn around their approach to the game at such short notice and risk their wicket every time they walked out to bat.
It took two years of transition before execution met strategy. But even when the team won the World Cup in 2024, the transformation was only half done, with old wine in new bottles. The team composition, the wine itself, needed to change. T20 worldcup 2026
Then Suryakumar Yadav, at the time the world’s most destructive T20 batter, took over India’s T20 side with the street smart Gautam Gambhir in the coach’s chair. Together, they quietly turned it into the most ruthless white‑ball operation since peak‑era Australia.
The SKY Era – No Loss, No Mercy
Since Suryakumar Yadav was handed the reins full‑time after the 2024 triumph, India have gone through bilateral T20I series the way a combined harvester goes through a wheat field. Relentlessly, efficiently, leaving nothing standing in their wake. India has played 39 T20Is under SKY leading up to the World Cup, winning 31, losing just 8, and not dropping a single bilateral series in that stretch. The vanquished teams included Australia (twice), South Africa, Sri Lanka, England, West Indies, New Zealand, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe.
What separates this phase from India’s previous bursts of white‑ball form is the complete absence of emotional volatility. Earlier Indian sides oscillated between genius and self‑sabotage. SKY’s team operates like a low‑heartbeat assassin, happy to chase 220 or defend 160 with the same, almost irritating, calm. His own batting style, the trademark unorthodox 360‑degree audacity, has become both a tactical template and a cultural signal. His own prowess may have started to dim with age, but his presence, calm confidence, and occasional reminder of the peak SKY speaks to the fact that for this team, fearlessness is no longer a slogan, it’s a selection criterion.
ICC White Ball Events – An Empire India built in three years
If bilateral cricket is the laboratory, ICC tournaments are the examination hall, and India’s transcript since 2023 reads like that of the class topper everyone secretly resents. The 2023 ODI World Cup at home yielded a 10‑1 record. Only a freak off‑day in the final triggered by a once-in-a-lifetime Travis Head innings, stopped a perfect run. In 2024, India went unbeaten through the T20 World Cup in the Americas, winning eight matches with one no result and edging South Africa in a tense Barbados final.
They followed that by winning the 2025 Champions Trophy in the UAE, again unbeaten, finishing with a 5‑0 record and another final win over New Zealand. Add the 2026 T20 World Cup defence and you get this scarcely believable record – across the last three major ICC events, India have played 25 matches with 23 wins, one defeat, and one no result. For a team once accused of freezing on the big stage, this is not a change of script, it is a reinvention of the genre.
Selection, Tactics, Strategy – India finally ‘get’ the T20 Format
This T20 World Cup has not just extended India’s dominance, but from the opposition’s standpoint, it has rewritten the playbook with a slightly cruel flourish. And the most significant shift has been philosophical.
For a decade, India picked T20 sides as if they were ODI teams in a hurry. Taking off from the Dravid-Rohit strategic turnaround in 2022, the new management has changed the vintage of the wine. They now select T20 specialists for T20 roles. Every grape in the bottle matters.
Powerplay batting has been entrusted to high‑intent openers whose strike rate, not reputation, buys them rope. If two of the top three also happen to be wicketkeepers, so be it. This is how an out-of-contention Sanju Samson came into the playing eleven and changed the trajectory of the team in this tournament, more than making up for Abhishek Sharma’s untimely loss of form. Ishan Kishan, a last-minute inclusion in the squad, used an injury to Abhishek to grab the opening slot with a jaw dropping display, and sealed his spot in the Top 3 when the opener returned.
Middle‑order slots have gone to players who can bat at 1.5 runs a ball from ball one, even if it means leaving out bigger names with prettier averages. Shivam Dube and Tilak Varma have picked up the slack created by an out-of-sorts captain while Rinku Singh warms the bench. T20 worldcup 2026
With the ball, India routinely fields at least two adaptable fast bowlers, a pace-bowling and spin‑bowling all‑rounder, alongside a specialist spinner, optimising matchup options. So well has this worked that Mohd Siraj and Kuldeep Yadav, two bowlers who would walk into any T20I side, have sat in the dugout cheering the team.
Strategic Intent, Tactical Execution
India now treats 200 as a starting point, not a ceiling. Twice, in matches where stakes were highest, they pushed for 250. And achieved it. They push the tempo in the powerplay, accept collapses as occupational hazard, and back depth – batting to No. 8, to rescue any misfire. With the ball, they use data‑driven plans – attacking hard lengths early, saving Bumrah and the other enforcers for the toughest match‑ups rather than just the death overs.
Rotation is no longer taboo. India rest stars, blood role‑specific youngsters, and walk into ICC tournaments with a group that has actually played those roles under pressure. And they have finally embraced flexibility – promotions, floating finishers, left‑right combos. In the Indian playbook, these are now tools, not afterthoughts.
If the 2010s were about India insisting that their way worked in every format, the mid‑2020s are about India admitting that T20 is a different sport – and then becoming the best at it. T20 worldcup 2026
India’s T20 empire vs Australia’s ODI Juggernaut
At its peak between 1999 and 2007, Australia treated 50‑over cricket like a private fiefdom. They won three World Cups in a row and went 34 matches in the tournament without defeat, including 25 straight wins. They strung together a 21‑match ODI winning streak in 2003 alone and turned World Cups into extended coronations.
India’s current run is the closest the T20 format has come to that kind of sustained reign of sporting terror. Three T20 World Cups in total, two in succession, an unmatched winning percentage under SKY, and a 23‑1 record across the last three ICC events form an eerily similar silhouette. The difference is structural. T20, with its volatility, depth of global talent and tactical roulette, is far harder to dominate than ODI cricket used to be. And that only magnifies what India are doing.
Just as in 2003 after one of their most comprehensive World Cup victories led by Ricky Ponting, we asked ourselves how long the Aussies could continue to dominate the ODI format, the days after the Massacre at Motera, the world will ask similar questions of India in T20I.
Just as Australia in their heyday, made one‑day cricket results feel predictable, India’s dominance in T20 today feels almost inevitable. The reality is that given the depth of talent in India, the continued improvement in standards thanks to the IPL, and the fact that success breeds success, India’s performance in the T20 format, frighteningly for its opponents, is only likely to get better with time.
