AA Edit | Team India’s Will To Win Dominates T20 World Cup

A team focused on the collective, on combined willow power and possessing the resilience to fight back from the lows with a cooperative will to win was bound to triumph. Not since the Brazil football team built a record of five football World Cup victories and the West Indies dominated everything in limited-overs cricket from the inaugural 1975 World Cup right up to the 1983 final, which they lost, has a sports team seemed so determined to win everything as Team India in the T20 format.

The spate of records they broke in becoming the first team to win three T20 World Cups, first to win the cup at home and the first to successfully defend a T20 World Cup tells the story of conquests. But it may not fully illustrate the spirit with which the team members performed, like a band of brothers in battle, standing up for each other and revelling in each other’s success. Team India were the favourites going into the World Cup despite their stuttering start against the USA and defeat at the hands of South Africa in the Super Eight and they delivered for their billion fans.

Team India timed the striking of winning form to perfection, beginning with the do-or-die chase against the West Indies, piling on the runs against Team England and keeping its nerve to defend a 250-plus target. And then decimated a team they had never beaten before in a T20 World Cup — the eternally overperforming underdogs, New Zealand.

A common factor in the three definitive victories on the trot to the cup was Sanju Samson, a batsman down and out before the World Cup and in and out of the XI in the competition but who was the very embodiment of mental strength in conquering the vicissitudes in a format that is the ficklest in handing out favours even to the boldest and the bravest.

The top order fired in such unison at the start that the Kiwis were down and out even by the time the six overs of Powerplay were completed. If Samson was not building on his innings of 97* and 89 with another of 89, Abhishek Sharma killed the demons in his mind after three ducks, which had led to pundits baying for his blood before the final.

As one of the formidable match winners among many, Team India backed Abhishek and he came up with the fastest half-century of a T20 World Cup to put India in the driver’s seat.

Ishan Kishan may have had to exorcise some of the ghosts of his career to reclaim his spot and he rounded up a great World Cup with a half-century that saw India post the third and most formidable of its 250 runs-plus totals in the final.

And then there was Jasprit Bumrah, the genie in a bottle who delivers wickets as per his captain Suryakumar Yadav and his team’s wishes. He stifled Team England’s chase at the right time and then came up with a combination of fast and slower yorkers with a consistency that the fast bowlers of the cricket world can only dream about.

There were also the doughty warriors like Axar ‘Bapu’ Patel, who are disdainfully termed bits-and-pieces men but who are in effect as much match winners as the fancy strikers of the ball.

His bowling in the Powerplay and his catches in the field were memorable contributions to the team’s cause, which meant so much more because this win for Team India of 2026 is a triumph of team effort, which is a huge lesson in these fractured times.