Indian Cricket has seen a rise after they won the 2007 T20 word Cup under the leadership of Mahendra Singh Dhoni. The win will always be special for all the fans as they had played only one-match before the tournament. Under MS Dhoni they had played a fearless brand of cricket throughout the tournament. However, the tournament witnessed the Indian team without any coach when they went to South Africa for the inaugural T20 World Cup. Former India player Lalchand Rajput was appointed the manager of the team which beat Pakistan in the final by 5 runs.
The 2007 World T20 also witnessed that stalwarts of Indian cricket like Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar didn’t feature in the mega event to give chance to youngsters. Lalchand Rajput revealed that it was Rahul Dravid, who convinced senior players like Tendulkar and Ganguly to leave their places to the youngsters in the inaugural T20 World Cup.
“Yes, it is true (Rahul Dravid stopping Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly from playing the 2007 T20 World Cup). Rahul Dravid was the captain in England and some players came directly from England to Johannesburg (for the T20 World Cup) so they said let’s give an opportunity to the youngsters. But after winning the World Cup they must have repented it because Sachin always kept on telling me that I am playing for so many years and I have still not won the World Cup,” Lalchand Rajput said to Sportskeeda.
However, Team India played the T20 World Cup with a pool of fresh talents like Rohit Sharma, Robin Uthappa, Sreesanth and RP Singh along with the experienced players like MS Dhoni, Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh and Harbhajan Singh. Rajput also praised MS Dhoni’s qualities as a leader as he referred to him as the mixture of Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid as captain.
“To be honest, he was very very calm. He used to think two steps ahead because a captain has to make a decision on the ground… One thing I liked about him was that he was a thinking captain. He seemed to me like a mixture of [Sourav] Ganguly and Rahul Dravid… Ganguly was very very aggressive and thinking but was positive and thinking,” Rajput said.
Notably, under MS Dhoni’s leadership, India won the 50-over World Cup as well in 2011.