India Won The T20 World Cup When No One Was Expecting Us To Win: Lalchand Rajput
Published - 25 Sep 2022, 04:21 PM | Updated - 23 Aug 2024, 12:13 AM
On this day, today, fifteen years ago, India scripted history by winning the inaugural edition of the ICC T20 World Cup. The historic moment when Pakistan skipper Misbah-ul-Haq attempted a scoop off Joginder Sharma’s delivery and ended up lobbing it to Sreesanth is etched in every Indian fan’s memory.
India won the T20 World Cup despite having played only a solitary T20I before the tournament. On top of that, many of the senior players like Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid had opted out.
Although it wasn’t a rag-tag team with the likes of Virender Sehwag, Harbhajan Singh, Yuvraj Singh, Irfan Pathan, Ajit Agarkar and Gautam Gambhir in the mix, no one gave them a chance.
Lalchand Rajput revealed the entire team was motivated to script something big
Recounting the special day, Lalchand Rajput, who was the coach of the World Cup winning squad shared his feelings about that special day.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Legends League Cricket tournament, he said, “Those memories will always be there because we made history. No one was expecting us to win. Even before leaving [for South Africa], everyone was talking about the young team, with a new captain [MS Dhoni], and a new coach; Dhoni was captaining for the first time, and I became a coach for the first time.
“But we were motivated to do something. And by winning the World Cup, we created history.”
Lalchand Rajput opined the current India team for the T20 World Cup has a lot of X-factors
Lalchand, who is coaching the Bhilwara Kings in Legends League Cricket said, “It was the first T20 World Cup, so no one knew what it was about. No one had any experience,” Rajput said.
“Before the World Cup, the Indian team had played only one T20I. Since IPL started in 2008, the players have evolved in the format. Many players have had a lot of game time”.
“There are a lot of X-Factor players in the Indian World Cup squad [for 2022]. At that time, we had Yuvraj and Sehwag. Now there are Hardik Pandya, [Rishabh] Pant and Suryakumar [Yadav].”
