India landed with youth team
India landed with a very young team in this tournament. Star players like Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and Anil Kumble decided not to play in the tournament. In fact, India played only one T20 match before the 2007 T20 World Cup. In such a situation, no one had talked about winning India.
India had landed under Dhoni’s leadership
The BCCI had chosen MS Dhoni as the captain of India in this tournament and India registered the biggest win after the 1983 World Cup. In the ODI World Cup held this year, India had to face defeat against Bangladesh and Team India was out of the group stage. After this, the supporters of India were disappointed and had no hope from the youth team.
Gambhir’s memorable half -century innings
As Team India progressed in the tournament, people’s interest started to grow in the tournament. India defeated Australia, South Africa and England to make it to the finals. In the final, Gautam Gambhir scored 75 runs in 54 balls and India scored 157 runs. Chasing a difficult target of 158 runs, Pakistan suffered an initial setback when important batsmen Mohammad Hafeez was out in the first over. After this, wickets kept falling at regular intervals.
India won by defeating Pakistan
However, Misbah-ul-Haq played a brilliant innings. He took Pakistan closer to victory on his own, but was dismissed in the last over and India won the match by five runs. After this, India also won the 2011 World Cup under Dhoni’s captaincy. Irfan Pathan took three wickets in the final and was awarded the Player of the Match Award.