India at the 2011 Cricket World Cup: Results & Squad
Written and checked by CricketTakenPublished Cricket in India11 min read
India played nine matches at the 2011 World Cup, won seven, lost one and tied one. The defeat was to South Africa at Nagpur on 12 March; the tie was against England at the Chinnaswamy Stadium on 27 February, when both sides finished on 338. Two of the three knockout matches were won chasing, and the last of them ended with MS Dhoni hitting Nuwan Kulasekara over long-on at the Wankhede Stadium with ten balls to spare.
That final made India the first side to win a World Cup on their own soil. Sri Lanka had won as a co-host in 1996, but the final that year was played in Lahore; India in 2011 won the tournament and the final in the same country, in front of a Mumbai crowd, twenty-eight years after Lord's.
The campaign is remembered for two men. Yuvraj Singh made 362 runs at 90.50 and took 15 wickets, won four player-of-the-match awards and was player of the tournament — the first cricketer to pass 300 runs and 15 wickets in a single World Cup. Zaheer Khan took 21 wickets in nine matches and finished joint-leading wicket taker with Shahid Afridi. Sachin Tendulkar's 482 runs were the second-highest aggregate of the tournament, in the sixth and last World Cup of his career.
Nine matches, eight grounds, two countries
| Date | Stage | Venue | Opponent | Scores | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 Feb | Group B | Mirpur | Bangladesh | India 370/4; Bangladesh 283/9 | India won by 87 runs |
| 27 Feb | Group B | Bengaluru | England | India 338; England 338/8 | Match tied |
| 6 Mar | Group B | Bengaluru | Ireland | Ireland 207; India 210/5 | India won by 5 wickets |
| 9 Mar | Group B | Delhi | Netherlands | Netherlands 189; India 191/5 | India won by 5 wickets |
| 12 Mar | Group B | Nagpur | South Africa | India 296; South Africa 300/7 | South Africa won by 3 wickets |
| 20 Mar | Group B | Chennai | West Indies | India 268; West Indies 188 | India won by 80 runs |
| 24 Mar | Quarter-final | Ahmedabad | Australia | Australia 260/6; India 261/5 | India won by 5 wickets |
| 30 Mar | Semi-final | Mohali | Pakistan | India 260/9; Pakistan 231 | India won by 29 runs |
| 2 Apr | Final | Wankhede | Sri Lanka | Sri Lanka 274/6; India 277/4 | India won by 6 wickets |
India finished second in Group B on nine points, one behind South Africa, and carried a tie and a defeat into the knockouts. They then chased 261 at Ahmedabad, defended 260 for 9 at Mohali and chased 275 at the Wankhede. Only one of the nine matches, the Nagpur defeat, went against them.
Dhoni's fifteen, and the bowler who did not make it
| Player | Contribution |
|---|---|
| MS Dhoni (capt, wk) | 241 runs at 48.20 — 91* in the final, player of the final |
| Sachin Tendulkar | 482 runs — 120 v England, 111 v South Africa, 85 in the semi-final |
| Virender Sehwag | 380 runs at a strike rate of 122.58 — 175 v Bangladesh |
| Gautam Gambhir | 393 runs with four fifties — 97 in the final |
| Yuvraj Singh | 362 runs and 15 wickets — player of the tournament |
| Virat Kohli | 282 runs — 100* on World Cup debut |
| Suresh Raina | 74 runs in three innings, twice not out, both in knockouts |
| Yusuf Pathan | 74 runs at 115.62 and one wicket in six matches |
| Zaheer Khan | 21 wickets at 18.76 across all nine matches |
| Harbhajan Singh | 9 wickets, economy 4.48, all nine matches |
| Munaf Patel | 11 wickets — 4/48 v Bangladesh |
| Ashish Nehra | 3 wickets in three matches — 2/33 in the semi-final |
| Piyush Chawla | 4 wickets in three matches |
| Ravichandran Ashwin | 4 wickets in two matches |
| Shanthakumaran Sreesanth | Two matches; conceded 105 from 13 overs |
Every one of the fifteen played at least one match, which is unusual for a nine-match campaign and reflects how much India rotated their fourth and fifth bowlers. Praveen Kumar had been named in the original party and withdrew injured before the tournament; Sreesanth replaced him and played the West Indies group match and the final.
The bowling attack was the weak part on paper. Zaheer, Harbhajan and Munaf Patel bowled more than 230 of India's overs between them and Yuvraj Singh's left-arm spin bowled another 75 — a part-time fifth bowler taking 15 wickets is not a plan any selector draws up, and it is the single biggest reason India's bowling held together. Gary Kirsten was coach, in the last of his three years in the job.
Mirpur and Bengaluru: 370 for 4, then 338 each
Virender Sehwag made 175 from 140 balls with fourteen fours and five sixes, and Virat Kohli made 100 not out from 83 balls in his first World Cup innings. India's 370 for 4 was the second-highest total they had made in the competition at that point, behind the 413 for 5 against Bermuda in 2007, and it came against a Test-playing side rather than an associate.
Bangladesh replied with 283 for 9, Tamim Iqbal making 70, and lost by 87. Munaf Patel took 4 for 48, the best return by an India seamer in the tournament. The match set the pattern for the group stage: a large first-innings score and bowling that conceded a good deal more than the margin suggests.
Tendulkar made 120 from 115 balls and India reached 338 in 49.5 overs, Tim Bresnan taking 5 for 48. Andrew Strauss then made 158 from 145 balls, Ian Bell 69, and England finished on 338 for 8. Zaheer Khan took 3 for 64. The scores were level and the match was tied.
It is the only tie in India's World Cup history, across every edition since 1975, and among the highest-scoring tied one-day internationals ever played. The point it cost is what left India second in Group B, and second place in Group B meant a quarter-final against Australia.
Bengaluru and Delhi: two chases, two low totals
Ireland were bowled out for 207 at the Chinnaswamy on 6 March, Yuvraj Singh taking 5 for 31 from ten overs — the only five-wicket haul by an India bowler in the tournament — and then making 50 not out as India got there with four overs to spare. It was the first of his four match awards.
Three days later at the Feroz Shah Kotla, the Netherlands made 189 with Zaheer Khan taking 3 for 20 from 6.4 overs, and India chased it in 36.3 overs with Yuvraj again unbeaten. Two matches, two match awards, and a pattern in which India's fifth bowler was also finishing their chases.
Nagpur, 12 March: 296 not enough
India's only defeat came from a position that looked won. Tendulkar made 111 and Sehwag 73, the pair adding 142 for the first wicket, and India were 267 for 1. They were then bowled out for 296 — the last nine wickets falling for 29 runs, with Dale Steyn taking 5 for 50.
South Africa reached 300 for 7 with two balls to spare. Harbhajan Singh took 3 for 53. The defeat left India second in the group and is the only match in the campaign in which their batting collapsed rather than their bowling leaked, which makes it the outlier in the record twice over.
Chennai and Ahmedabad: Yuvraj's hundred, then Australia
Yuvraj Singh made 113 from 123 balls at Chepauk on 20 March, India made 268, and the West Indies were bowled out for 188 with Zaheer taking 3 for 26. That was the third match award and the group place secured.
Four days later at the Sardar Patel Stadium, Australia — champions in 1999, 2003 and 2007 — made 260 for 6, Ricky Ponting scoring a hundred. India chased it in 47.4 overs. Tendulkar made 53, Gambhir 50, Yuvraj 57 not out and Raina 34 not out, and Yuvraj also took 2 for 44. It ended Australia's twelve-year hold on the trophy and was India's first World Cup knockout win over them; the longer history of that fixture is in the India–Australia rivalry guide.
Mohali, 30 March: 260 for 9, and Pakistan for 231
The semi-final was the first World Cup knockout meeting between India and Pakistan. India made 260 for 9 with Tendulkar top-scoring on 85 from 115 balls, an innings in which he was dropped four times, and Wahab Riaz taking 5 for 46.
Pakistan were dismissed for 231 in 49.5 overs. Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra, Harbhajan Singh, Munaf Patel and Yuvraj Singh each took two wickets — five bowlers, ten wickets, none more than two, which is the tidiest collective bowling India managed in the tournament. Misbah-ul-Haq made 56. The wider record between the two sides is set out in the India–Pakistan rivalry guide.
The Wankhede, 2 April: 274 chased with ten balls left
Sri Lanka made 274 for 6, Mahela Jayawardene scoring 103 not out from 88 balls. India lost Sehwag for 0 to the second ball of the reply and Tendulkar for 18, and were 31 for 2 inside seven overs.
Gautam Gambhir made 97 from 122 balls and Virat Kohli 35; Dhoni, who had promoted himself above Yuvraj Singh, made 91 not out from 79 balls and finished with a six over long-on off Kulasekara. India reached 277 for 4 in 48.2 overs. Dhoni was player of the final. Yuvraj was 21 not out at the other end and was named player of the tournament a few minutes later.
Tendulkar had played every World Cup since 1992 and this was the sixth; the way that night is remembered has as much to do with him as with the result, and is covered in the piece on his Wankhede farewell. Dhoni's own record as a finisher in that innings is examined in Dhoni in the 2011 final.
Tendulkar 482, Zaheer 21
| Player | Tournament figures |
|---|---|
| Sachin Tendulkar | 482 runs at 53.55 with two hundreds and two fifties |
| Gautam Gambhir | 393 runs at 43.66, four fifties, no hundred |
| Virender Sehwag | 380 runs at 47.50, strike rate 122.58 |
| Yuvraj Singh | 362 runs at 90.50 and 15 wickets at 25.13 |
| Virat Kohli | 282 runs at 35.25 |
| Zaheer Khan | 21 wickets at 18.76, economy 4.83 |
| Munaf Patel | 11 wickets at 32.09 |
| Harbhajan Singh | 9 wickets at 43.33, economy 4.48 |
Tillakaratne Dilshan of Sri Lanka led the tournament's run scorers with 500; Tendulkar was second on 482 and Kumar Sangakkara third on 465. Zaheer Khan's 21 wickets matched Shahid Afridi's, though Afridi took his at 12.85 to Zaheer's 18.76 and had two five-wicket hauls to Zaheer's none.
The interesting number in that table is Gambhir's. Four fifties and no hundred, 393 runs at a strike rate of 85, and the top score of the final — a campaign nobody lists among the tournament's great individual runs and which India could not have won without.
Five things the 2011 record shows
India won the tournament without a settled bowling attack. Five bowlers played three matches or fewer. Piyush Chawla, Ashwin, Nehra and Sreesanth took eleven wickets between them across ten appearances. The two bowlers who played all nine, Zaheer and Harbhajan, took thirty.
The two knockout chases were both completed with overs to spare. India needed 261 at Ahmedabad and got it in 47.4, and needed 275 at the Wankhede and got it in 48.2. The semi-final was the exception: India batted first at Mohali and defended 260 for 9, the only total they defended in the knockouts.
The top order did the heavy work and the middle order finished. Tendulkar, Sehwag and Gambhir made 1,255 runs between them. Dhoni, Yuvraj Singh and Suresh Raina were not out nine times between them across the tournament, and two of those unbeaten innings ended the quarter-final and the final.
The tie mattered more than the defeat. Losing at Nagpur cost India nothing they could not recover; the Bengaluru tie cost them a point that would have put them top of the group and given them a different quarter-final. In a tournament decided by three knockout matches, that is the result with the longest shadow.
Yuvraj Singh's tournament has no real precedent in an India shirt. 362 runs at 90.50, 15 wickets, four match awards, and 75 overs bowled as the fifth option. India have had better batting campaigns and better bowling ones; nobody has combined the two at that level in a World Cup they won.
For the earlier title, see India at the 1983 World Cup; for the campaign four years later, India at the 2015 World Cup. Every edition of the competition is indexed on the fifty-over World Cup hub, India's whole record in it in India at the World Cup, and the rest of the game in the country under cricket in India.
Sources and method
Match results, dates, venues, margins, innings totals, individual scores and bowling analyses come from ESPNcricinfo's Statsguru, filtered to one-day internationals played between 15 February and 5 April 2011, and were read on 20 August 2026. The tournament leaderboards — Dilshan's 500 runs, Zaheer Khan and Shahid Afridi on 21 wickets — are the same filter applied to all fourteen teams.
The squad of fifteen is the party the BCCI named, with the note that Praveen Kumar withdrew injured before the tournament and Sreesanth replaced him. Detail that a statistical filter does not carry — the dropped catches at Mohali, Dhoni promoting himself in the final, the shot that finished it — comes from contemporary reports and is descriptive.
Two claims here are stated as records and were checked against the wider lists rather than India's matches alone: that India were the first side to win a World Cup final played in their own country, and that the Bengaluru tie is the only tied match India have played at a World Cup. Aggregate figures such as the 1,255 runs from the top three are sums of the published individual totals. The five closing observations are analysis and are offered as such.