Team India in action© AFP
A young Indian team left everyone utterly impressed after they defeated South Africa in the recently-concluded four-match T20I series. Playing under the captaincy of Suryakumar Yadav, India dominated the Proteas in all the departments and clinched the series with 3-1 scoreline. In the fourth match in Johannesburg, India posted a whopping total of 283/1 and then bundled out South Africa for 148 and won the match by 135 runs. With this win, India broke Pakistan’s massive six-year-old T20I record.
The year 2024 has been phenomenal for India as they first won the T20 World Cup under Rohit Sharma and then went on to win the T20Is against Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and now South Africa. In total, India played 26 T20Is and won 24 of them in 2024.
With these stats, India’s win percentage in T20Is in 2024 has gone up to 92.31%, the highest by any team in a calendar year. This record was earlier held by Pakistan with a percentage of 89.43% in 2018.
Not only this, India have also registered the second highest win percentage in T20 cricket as only Tamil Nadu leads the table with 93.75%. The third spot has been taken by Karnataka with 91.67%.
“There’s no secret to adapting to the conditions and situations. Our plans were very clear as soon as we landed in Durban. Last time when we came here, we played the same brand of cricket and wanted to continue that. Though we were up 2-1 in the series, today we wanted to follow the good habits and not worry about the result. It happened naturally,” Suryakumar said after India’s win in the fourth T20I.
“It was difficult to sum up what goes through our minds when we won there. It is very challenging when we tour South Africa, to come and win here, this is a special win and will stay with me forever. [on the coaching and support staff] They were sitting and enjoying the show since the first day, they spoke to the boys and said whatever you want, you do, we will sit and enjoy. Even today, they said if you want to bat first and put runs on the board, do it,” he added.
Topics mentioned in this article
