India at the 2012 T20 World Cup: Results, Squad & Stats

India played all five of their 2012 World Twenty20 matches at the R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo, won three of them, dismissed four of the five sides they met, and were knocked out anyway. Australia, Pakistan and India all finished the Super Eight with four points; the two places went to the two teams with the better net run rate, and India's was third of the three by half a run. The arithmetic had been settled a week earlier, on the night Australia chased 141 with thirty-one balls unused.

The fourth World Twenty20 ran from 18 September to 7 October across Colombo, Hambantota and Pallekele: twelve teams in four groups of three, the top two into two Super Eight groups of four, then semi-finals. The West Indies won it, beating Sri Lanka by 36 runs in the final at the same Colombo ground on 7 October — Marlon Samuels made 78 and took the match award. Shane Watson finished as the leading run scorer with 249 and Ajantha Mendis as the leading wicket-taker with 15.

MS Dhoni's squad had Virat Kohli in the middle order rather than at the top, Yuvraj Singh back in a global tournament after his cancer treatment, and a bowling attack that leaned on spin and swing rather than pace. It worked more often than the result suggests: India took 38 wickets in five matches and dismissed four of the five sides they played.

India's five matches at the R Premadasa Stadium

Date	Stage	Opponent	Scores	Result
19 Sep	Group A	Afghanistan	India 159/5; Afghanistan 136 (19.3)	India won by 23 runs
23 Sep	Group A	England	India 170/4; England 80 (14.4)	India won by 90 runs
28 Sep	Super Eight	Australia	India 140/7; Australia 141/1 (14.5)	Australia won by 9 wickets
30 Sep	Super Eight	Pakistan	Pakistan 128 (19.4); India 129/2 (17)	India won by 8 wickets
2 Oct	Super Eight	South Africa	India 152/6; South Africa 151 (19.5)	India won by 1 run

Four of those five opponents were bowled out. The one that was not scored 141 for 1 and won by nine wickets.

Group A: Afghanistan by 23, England by 90

Team	Played	Won	Lost	Net run rate	Points
India	2	2	0	+2.825	4
England	2	1	1	+0.650	2
Afghanistan	2	0	2	−3.475	0

Afghanistan put India in on 19 September and were nearly rewarded: India were 34 for 2 inside the powerplay before Kohli made 50 from 39 balls and Suresh Raina 38 from 33. Dhoni's unbeaten 18 came off nine deliveries and India reached 159 for 5. Afghanistan replied at more than a run a ball for fourteen overs — Mohammad Nabi hit 31 from 17 — before Lakshmipathy Balaji took 3 for 19 and Yuvraj Singh 3 for 24, and they were all out for 136 in the last over.

The England match four nights later was the most complete performance of India's tournament, and it is described next. It was also the only group match in which either of these sides was bowled out, and the longer story between them sits in the India and England rivalry guide.

Harbhajan's 4 for 12, and England bowled out for 80

England put India in. Gautam Gambhir made 45 from 38, Kohli 40 from 32 in a second-wicket stand of 50, and Rohit Sharma finished with 55 not out from 33 balls, reaching his fifty off 31. Graeme Swann conceded 17 in four overs; Jade Dernbach went for 45. India closed on 170 for 4.

England lost three wickets inside the powerplay and never recovered. Craig Kieswetter's 35 from 25 was the only score above 12. Harbhajan Singh took 4 for 12 from his four overs, Piyush Chawla 2 for 13 and Irfan Pathan 2 for 17, and England were all out for 80 in 14.4 overs. It gave Harbhajan the match award in what turned out to be his last global tournament for India. His career is set out on his player page.

28 September: fourteen and a half overs that decided the tournament

India chose to bat against Australia and could not get away. Irfan Pathan top-scored with 31 from 30; Raina made 26 from 19; nobody else passed 17. Pat Cummins took 2 for 16 and Shane Watson 3 for 34, and India managed 140 for 7 — a par score at that ground on that surface, and about twenty short of a defensible one.

Watson then hit 72 from 42 balls with seven sixes and David Warner 63 not out from 41, and Australia won by nine wickets with 31 balls to spare. Yuvraj took the only wicket. In net run rate terms the damage was not the defeat but its speed: India had conceded their whole allocation of runs in less than three-quarters of the overs available, and the deficit that created was one they never made up.

Kohli's 78 not out, and Pakistan for 128

Pakistan batted first on 30 September and were dismissed for 128 in 19.4 overs. Balaji took 3 for 22, R Ashwin 2 for 16, Yuvraj 2 for 16 and Kohli, bowling three overs of medium pace, 1 for 21. Shoaib Malik's 28 was the highest score in the innings and no partnership reached 40.

Gambhir went for a duck in the second over. Kohli then made 78 not out from 61 balls with eight fours and two sixes, adding 74 with Virender Sehwag and finishing the chase in the seventeenth over with Yuvraj alongside him. It was the innings that established Kohli as India's chase batter in the format, a role explored further on his player page, and the fixture's longer history is covered in the India and Pakistan rivalry guide.

One run against South Africa, thirty short of enough

Pakistan beat Australia earlier on 2 October and finished Group 2 on four points with a net run rate of +0.273. That set India a target with two numbers in it: win, and win by enough. Batting first after South Africa put them in, India made 152 for 6 — Raina 45 from 34, Rohit Sharma 25, Dhoni 23 not out from 13, Yuvraj 21 from 15 with two sixes. Morne Morkel and Robin Peterson took two wickets each.

To pass Pakistan's net run rate, India needed to keep South Africa to 121 or fewer, a margin of 31 runs. Faf du Plessis made 65 from 38 balls and put the second part out of reach; when he went, the first part was still live. Zaheer Khan took 3 for 22, Balaji 3 for 37 and Yuvraj 2 for 23, and South Africa were all out for 151 off the last ball but one. India had won by one run and finished third.

Team	Played	Won	Lost	Net run rate	Points
Australia	3	2	1	+0.464	4
Pakistan	3	2	1	+0.273	4
India	3	2	1	−0.274	4
South Africa	3	0	3	−0.421	0

Three sides, four points each, and a group settled entirely on run rate. South Africa lost all three and still finished within 0.15 of India.

Dhoni's fifteen

Player	Role	Matches
MS Dhoni (capt, wk)	Wicketkeeper-batter	5
Gautam Gambhir (vice-capt)	Opening batter	5
Virat Kohli	Batter, part-time medium pace	5
Suresh Raina	Middle-order batter	5
Rohit Sharma	Batter	5
Yuvraj Singh	Batter, left-arm spin	5
Irfan Pathan	Left-arm swing, batting	5
R Ashwin	Off spin	4
Lakshmipathy Balaji	Right-arm fast-medium	4
Zaheer Khan	Left-arm fast	4
Virender Sehwag	Opening batter	3
Harbhajan Singh	Off spin	2
Piyush Chawla	Leg spin	2
Ashok Dinda	Right-arm fast-medium	1
Manoj Tiwary	Batter	0

Sehwag missed the England and Australia matches and returned for the last two; Balaji and Harbhajan were rarely picked in the same eleven. India used five different bowling combinations in five matches, and Yuvraj Singh — whose return to international cricket after treatment is covered in the account of his 2011 World Cup and comeback — bowled in all five.

Batting and bowling across five matches

Everyone who batted or bowled appears below. With five matches played, applying a minimum-innings cut-off would delete more of the picture than it clarified.

Player	Innings	Runs	Highest	Not out	Average	Strike rate	Fours
Virat Kohli	5	185	78*	1	46.25	122.52	20
Suresh Raina	4	110	45	1	36.67	126.44	15
Rohit Sharma	4	82	55*	2	41.00	130.16	7
Gautam Gambhir	5	80	45	0	16.00	111.11	10
Yuvraj Singh	4	66	21	1	22.00	108.20	4
MS Dhoni	4	65	23*	2	32.50	127.45	8
Virender Sehwag	3	54	29	0	18.00	112.50	6
Irfan Pathan	2	39	31	0	19.50	102.63	3
R Ashwin	1	16	16*	1	—	133.33	1
Harbhajan Singh	1	1	1*	1	—	100.00	0

Player	Overs	Runs	Wickets	Best	Average	Economy
Lakshmipathy Balaji	12.0	88	9	3/19	9.78	7.33
Yuvraj Singh	13.4	81	8	3/24	10.13	5.93
Irfan Pathan	14.0	121	5	2/17	24.20	8.64
R Ashwin	15.5	95	5	2/16	19.00	6.00
Harbhajan Singh	6.0	32	4	4/12	8.00	5.33
Zaheer Khan	13.0	94	3	3/22	31.33	7.23
Piyush Chawla	5.0	27	2	2/13	13.50	5.40
Virat Kohli	4.0	31	1	1/21	31.00	7.75
Ashok Dinda	2.0	26	1	1/26	26.00	13.00
Rohit Sharma	3.0	35	0	—	—	11.67

Three things the 2012 numbers show

The bowling was the strength and it still could not save the campaign. India's ten bowlers took 38 wickets in 531 legal deliveries at a combined economy rate of about 7.1, and four of the five opposition innings ended with all ten wickets down. Balaji's nine wickets cost 9.78 each and Yuvraj's eight cost 10.13. Against every side except Australia the plan worked exactly as designed; against Australia it produced one wicket in 89 balls.

The batting had one reliable place and no depth beyond it. Kohli made 185 of the 698 runs India's batters scored, at a strike rate of 122.52 that was slower than the format demanded but faster than the failures around him. Gambhir opened in all five matches for 80 runs at 16.00. Only two India batters reached fifty all tournament, both once, and no innings passed 78.

Run rate, not results, decided it. India won two of three Super Eight matches, the same as Australia and Pakistan, and the sequence in which the group's margins arrived left them third. Australia's chase of 141 in 14.5 overs on 28 September moved India's net run rate by more than the two wins that followed could recover — which is why the one-run margin on 2 October, a fine result in isolation, was thirty short of what the table required. The next tournament put India in a final: that campaign is covered in India at the 2014 T20 World Cup, and the two years before it in India at the 2010 T20 World Cup. Every staging of the competition is indexed on the T20 World Cup hub, this one at the 2012 tournament page, with the domestic and international game in the country at cricket in India.

Sources and method

Match scores, dismissals, overs and individual figures for the England, Australia, Pakistan and South Africa matches were recomputed from the ball-by-ball records in the Cricsheet open dataset (Cricsheet, ODC-BY 1.0). The Afghanistan match of 19 September is not in that dataset; its figures come from ESPNcricinfo's scorecard. Group and Super Eight tables, with net run rates, follow the official standings for the 2012 ICC World Twenty20. Squad membership is the fifteen India named. Checked in August 2026.

Balls faced include no-balls and exclude wides; bowlers are not charged with byes or leg byes. The aggregate tables were built by summing the per-match figures, so averages, strike rates and economy rates here are derived rather than quoted.

The statement that India needed to hold South Africa to 121 is a calculation, not a reported figure: it takes India's Super Eight runs and overs for and against, treats a side dismissed inside twenty overs as having faced twenty, and solves for the South Africa total that would have lifted India's net run rate above Pakistan's published +0.273. The combined economy rate and the 38-wicket total in the closing section were computed the same way, from the per-match columns.