India’s win at T20 World Cup: A team that is the sum of its parts

For the last 43 years, India’s World Cup victories had a face. Kapil’s Devils. Dhoni’s Army. Rohit’s boys. The trophy and the man who lifted it were inseparable — the captain was the team’s identity. Indian cricket understood itself through its giants. The World T20 final on Sunday in Ahmedabad was different. This was a team that was the sum of its parts. The captain who lifted the trophy, Suryakumar Yadav, didn’t have the best of tournaments but he was always there for his team. Coach Gautam Gambhir, ever so reluctant to be in the limelight, was trying his best to understate his role in India creating history — first to win a World T20 at home, retain the Cup.

This is a team with no prima donnas. It is not a team built around immunity. It was built around accountability — a principle Gambhir has enforced from Day One. Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma departed when their time was up.Shubman Gill, cricket’s newest superstar, missed the party entirely. No one was too big to be questioned. No one was too small to be backed. The blueprint of this triumph took 18 months. Bilateral series that looked routine were rehearsals. Venues were chosen deliberately keeping in mind the all-important ICC event. Scenarios were manufactured inside real matches, solutions placed on the table before the tournament required them. When Wankhede’s semi-final arrived, Sanju Samson walked out and dismantled England with the calm of a man who had already been here.

This World T20 victory was not a discovery. It was an eventuality that was expected after a well-planned process. Indian cricket has spent decades building giants and watching them become institutions too powerful to question. What Gambhir has built, instead, is a system designed to outlast any individual within it, including himself. That is the harder thing to build. And the more important thing is to win.