India at the 2007 T20 World Cup: Results & Squad
Written and checked by CricketTakenPublished Cricket in India10 min read
India arrived in South Africa in September 2007 having played one Twenty20 international in their history, a match against South Africa at Johannesburg nine months earlier. Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly were not in the squad. MS Dhoni, twenty-six years old, was captaining India in a global tournament for the first time.
They played seven matches in eleven days and won the competition. One was abandoned without a ball bowled, one was tied and settled by a bowl-out, one was lost, and the last four were all won batting first — by 18 runs, 37 runs, 15 runs and, in the final at the Wanderers on 24 September, by 5.
Almost nothing about the campaign looks like a plan. India's leading run scorer was an opener, their leading wicket taker a left-arm seamer of twenty-one, the last over of the final was given to a medium-pacer who played four matches in the whole tournament, and the innings it is remembered for lasted sixteen balls.
Seven matches in eleven days
| Date | Stage | Venue | Opponent | Scores | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 13 Sep | Group D | Durban | Scotland | No play | No result |
| 14 Sep | Group D | Durban | Pakistan | India 141/9; Pakistan 141/7 | Tied — India won the bowl-out 3-0 |
| 16 Sep | Super 8 | Johannesburg | New Zealand | New Zealand 190; India 180/9 | New Zealand won by 10 runs |
| 19 Sep | Super 8 | Durban | England | India 218/4; England 200/6 | India won by 18 runs |
| 20 Sep | Super 8 | Durban | South Africa | India 153/5; South Africa 116/9 | India won by 37 runs |
| 22 Sep | Semi-final | Durban | Australia | India 188/5; Australia 173/7 | India won by 15 runs |
| 24 Sep | Final | Johannesburg | Pakistan | India 157/5; Pakistan 152 | India won by 5 runs |
Four of the seven were at Kingsmead in Durban, which is where India played every knockout-relevant match except the final. The tournament ran from 11 to 24 September and used twelve teams in four groups of three, feeding two Super 8 groups of four.
Fifteen players, fourteen of whom got a game
| Player | Contribution |
|---|---|
| MS Dhoni (capt, wk) | 154 runs at a strike rate of 128.33 across six innings |
| Gautam Gambhir | 227 runs — three fifties, including 75 in the final |
| Virender Sehwag | 133 runs — 68 v England; missed the final through injury |
| Robin Uthappa | 113 runs and one of the three successful bowl-out deliveries |
| Yuvraj Singh | 148 runs from 76 balls — 58 off 16 v England, 70 off 30 v Australia |
| Rohit Sharma | 88 runs in three innings without being dismissed — 50* v South Africa |
| Dinesh Karthik | 28 runs in three innings as reserve keeper and batter |
| Yusuf Pathan | One match — opened in the final on T20 international debut |
| Irfan Pathan | 10 wickets — 3/16 in the final, player of the match |
| RP Singh | 12 wickets at 12.66 — 4/13 v South Africa |
| Shanthakumaran Sreesanth | 6 wickets; took the catch that ended the final |
| Harbhajan Singh | 7 wickets and a successful bowl-out delivery |
| Ajit Agarkar | Three matches, one wicket |
| Joginder Sharma | 4 wickets — bowled the last over of the final |
| Piyush Chawla | Did not play a match |
Fourteen of the fifteen played. Piyush Chawla is the one who did not, which in a seven-match tournament with two spinners already in the side is less surprising than it sounds.
The composition is the interesting part. India took four seamers and two spinners, and the two who took most wickets — RP Singh and Irfan Pathan — bowled left-arm and swung the ball. Yuvraj Singh bowled three overs in the whole tournament. Rohit Sharma, twenty years old, batted three times and was not out three times.
Durban, 14 September: a tie and a bowl-out
Group D held three teams and the Scotland match was washed out without a ball, so the Pakistan game decided who went through. India made 141 for 9. Pakistan reached 141 for 7 and Misbah-ul-Haq was run out on the last ball of the innings, which left the scores level.
There were no Super Overs in 2007. The tie was resolved by a bowl-out: five bowlers a side aiming at an unguarded set of stumps. Virender Sehwag, Harbhajan Singh and Robin Uthappa hit for India; none of Pakistan's three bowlers did. India won it 3-0 and topped the group.
It is the only bowl-out India have ever taken part in, and the mechanism was retired from international cricket soon afterwards. Two of the men who decided it, Sehwag and Harbhajan, were front-line internationals; Uthappa was a wicketkeeper-batter who had bowled almost never.
Johannesburg, 16 September: the one they lost
New Zealand made 190 at the Wanderers — Brendon McCullum 45 from 31 balls, Craig McMillan 44 from 23, Jacob Oram 35 from 15 — and India were bowled out for 180 in reply. Gautam Gambhir made 51 from 33 balls. It is the only defeat India suffered in the tournament and the only match in which they batted second.
That is worth stating on its own. India batted first in five of their six completed matches and did not lose any of them, the tied game against Pakistan included once the bowl-out is counted. Their only chase was their only defeat.
Durban, 19 September: sixteen balls
India made 218 for 4 against England, the highest total they had made in the format and the second-highest of the tournament after Sri Lanka's 260 against Kenya five days earlier. Sehwag made 68 from 52, Gambhir 58 from 41. In the nineteenth over Yuvraj Singh, who had exchanged words with Andrew Flintoff earlier in the innings, hit Stuart Broad for six sixes in six balls.
He reached fifty from twelve deliveries — the fastest fifty in international cricket at the time — and finished on 58 from sixteen balls at a strike rate of 362.50. England replied with 200 for 6 and lost by 18, and Irfan Pathan took 3 for 37.
The over is the most replayed sequence in Indian Twenty20 cricket and is examined in full in Yuvraj Singh's six sixes. Its immediate effect was on net run rate rather than on anything else; its long-term effect on how Indian audiences understood the format is harder to measure and probably larger.
Durban, 20 September: the hosts eliminated
India needed to beat South Africa to reach the semi-finals and made only 153 for 5, Rohit Sharma finishing on 50 not out from 40 balls after coming in at 61 for 4. South Africa, needing 126 to go through on net run rate, were bowled out for 116 in 20 overs.
RP Singh took 4 for 13 from four overs, the best analysis by an India bowler in the tournament, and Sreesanth 2 for 23. The hosts went out. India's 153 was their lowest completed total of the competition and their bowlers turned it into a 37-run win, which is the match that most argues against reading 2007 as a batting tournament for India.
Durban, 22 September: Yuvraj's 70 from 30
Australia had won the previous three fifty-over World Cups and were unbeaten in the Super 8s. India made 188 for 5, Yuvraj Singh scoring 70 from 30 balls with five fours and five sixes after Australia had reduced India to 41 for 2.
Australia's reply reached 173 for 7. Sreesanth took 2 for 12 from four overs. Matthew Hayden, the tournament's leading run scorer, made 62 from 47 balls and Andrew Symonds 43 from 26. Fifteen runs, and India were in a global final for the first time since 2003.
Johannesburg, 24 September: 157, and the last over
Sehwag was ruled out with a groin injury on the morning of the final. Yusuf Pathan opened in his place on Twenty20 international debut and made 15 from 8 balls. Gautam Gambhir made 75 from 54 with eight fours and two sixes, Rohit Sharma 30 not out from 16, and India finished on 157 for 5.
Irfan Pathan took 3 for 16 and RP Singh 3 for 26, and Pakistan's top five made 66 between them. Misbah-ul-Haq then made 43 from 38 balls with four sixes and took Pakistan to within 13 runs with one over left and one wicket standing. Dhoni gave the twentieth over to Joginder Sharma rather than to Harbhajan Singh, who had an over in hand. Misbah scooped the fourth ball to short fine leg where Sreesanth caught it, and Pakistan were bowled out for 152.
Irfan Pathan's 3 for 16 won him the match award; the full account of that spell is in Irfan Pathan in the 2007 final. Gambhir's 75 was the highest score by an India batter in a men's T20 World Cup final until Sanju Samson's 89 at Ahmedabad in 2026.
Gambhir 227, RP Singh 12
| Player | Tournament figures |
|---|---|
| Gautam Gambhir | 227 runs at 37.83, strike rate 129.71, three fifties |
| MS Dhoni | 154 runs at 30.80 |
| Yuvraj Singh | 148 runs from 76 balls — strike rate 194.73, twelve sixes |
| Virender Sehwag | 133 runs at a strike rate of 138.54 |
| Robin Uthappa | 113 runs, one fifty |
| RP Singh | 12 wickets at 12.66, economy 6.33 |
| Irfan Pathan | 10 wickets at 14.90 |
| Harbhajan Singh | 7 wickets, economy 7.91 |
| Shanthakumaran Sreesanth | 6 wickets at 30.50 |
Gambhir finished fourth in the tournament's run-scoring list behind Matthew Hayden's 265, Misbah-ul-Haq's 251 and Shoaib Malik's 247. RP Singh's 12 wickets put him fourth in the bowling list behind Shahid Afridi's 14, Umar Gul's 13 and Stuart Clark's 12 on a better average. Afridi was player of the tournament.
No India batter made a hundred and none passed 75. Yuvraj Singh's twelve sixes from 76 balls faced is the figure that stands out: Gambhir faced 175 balls and hit five, Dhoni faced 120 and hit three, and Yuvraj hit more than the two of them put together.
Four things the 2007 record shows
India won it batting first, every time. Five results, five first-innings scores, five wins — 218, 153, 188 and 157 in the four matches that mattered, and 141 in the tie. The one match they chased, at the Wanderers against New Zealand, they lost. For a side later defined by its chasing, that is the opposite of the reputation.
The bowling was tighter than the scoreline suggests. India defended 153 against South Africa and 157 against Pakistan, and bowled sides out for 116 and 152. RP Singh and Irfan Pathan took 22 of the wickets between them at under 15 apiece.
The batting depended on cameos, not on innings. Yuvraj Singh's 148 runs came from 76 balls; Rohit Sharma's 88 came in three not-outs; Gambhir was the only batter to bat through a top-order role more than twice. India's highest individual score in the whole tournament was 75.
The squad was the youngest India had sent to a global event in years, and that was deliberate. With the senior batting trio absent, the selectors picked a side of players in their twenties for a format nobody had a settled method for. The consequence — an Indian Premier League announced within months and a national appetite for Twenty20 that had not existed in August — is covered in T20 international cricket in India.
India's second title came seventeen years later in the Caribbean and is set out in India at the 2024 T20 World Cup; the third, at home, in India at the 2026 T20 World Cup. Every edition of the competition is indexed on the T20 World Cup hub, and the rest of the game in the country under cricket in India.
Sources and method
Results, dates, venues, margins, innings totals, individual scores and bowling analyses come from ESPNcricinfo's Statsguru, filtered to Twenty20 internationals played in September 2007, and were read on 20 August 2026. The tournament leaderboards — Hayden's 265 runs, Afridi's 14 wickets — are the same filter applied to all twelve teams.
The squad of fifteen is the party the BCCI named, and the note that Piyush Chawla did not appear is a count from the match records. Detail a statistical filter does not carry — the bowl-out and which three bowlers hit, Sehwag's injury on the morning of the final, the decision to give the last over to Joginder Sharma, the catch at short fine leg — comes from contemporary reports and is descriptive rather than computed.
Where a figure is described as a record it is dated. Yuvraj Singh's twelve-ball fifty is given as the fastest in international cricket at the time rather than now; Gambhir's 75 is given as the highest by an India batter in a men's T20 World Cup final until 2026; India's 218 for 4 is given as their own highest in the format at that point, not the tournament's. The four closing observations are analysis, not data.