India at the 2021 T20 World Cup: Results, Squad & Stats

India went to the United Arab Emirates in October 2021 as one of the favourites and were out of the tournament before their last group match was played. Two defeats in eight days — by ten wickets to Pakistan and by eight to New Zealand — put them behind two sides who then did not lose again in the group. India won their remaining three matches by 66 runs, eight wickets and nine wickets, and it made no difference.

The strange residue of that fortnight is in the group table. India finished third on six points and left the tournament with a net run rate of +1.747, the highest figure in Group 2 and higher than the unbeaten Pakistan side that topped it. Three heavy wins against Afghanistan, Scotland and Namibia inflated a number that had stopped meaning anything by the time it was earned.

The tournament also closed two chapters at once. Virat Kohli had announced in September that he would give up the T20 captaincy after it, and did. Ravi Shastri's term as head coach ended with the group stage. MS Dhoni, who had not played for India since the 2019 World Cup semi-final, was attached to the squad as mentor for the duration.

Five matches, two of which mattered

Date	Ground	Opponent	Toss	Scores	Result
24 Oct	Dubai	Pakistan	Pakistan field	India 151/7; Pakistan 152/0	Pakistan won by 10 wickets
31 Oct	Dubai	New Zealand	New Zealand field	India 110/7; New Zealand 111/2	New Zealand won by 8 wickets
3 Nov	Abu Dhabi	Afghanistan	Afghanistan field	India 210/2; Afghanistan 144/7	India won by 66 runs
5 Nov	Dubai	Scotland	India field	Scotland 85; India 89/2	India won by 8 wickets
8 Nov	Dubai	Namibia	India field	Namibia 132/8; India 136/1	India won by 9 wickets

Four of the five were played at the Dubai International Stadium, where the toss and the dew were widely held to decide matches. India lost the toss in both games that ended their campaign and were put in on each occasion.

Group 2: third on points, first on run rate

Team	Played	Won	Lost	Net run rate	Points
Pakistan	5	5	0	+1.583	10
New Zealand	5	4	1	+1.162	8
India	5	3	2	+1.747	6
Afghanistan	5	2	3	+1.053	4
Namibia	5	1	4	−1.890	2
Scotland	5	0	5	−3.543	0

The figure is an artefact of scheduling rather than of form. India met Pakistan and New Zealand first and the three weakest sides in the group afterwards, so the three run-rate-inflating wins all came after elimination was effectively settled. New Zealand's win over Afghanistan on 7 November confirmed it with a day of the group stage still to play.

Dubai, 24 October: a twelve-match record ends

India had won all twelve previous World Cup meetings with Pakistan across both limited-overs formats. The thirteenth ended it in the most emphatic way available.

Shaheen Shah Afridi took 3 for 31 and had Rohit Sharma lbw for a first-ball duck and KL Rahul bowled in his first two overs. India were 6 for 2 in the second over. Kohli made 57 from 49 and Rishabh Pant 39 from 30, and India reached 151 for 7 — a total that looked twenty short and proved forty short.

Mohammad Rizwan and Babar Azam then made 152 without being separated in 17.5 overs. India used five bowlers and none of them took a wicket; Jasprit Bumrah conceded 22 from three overs and every other bowler went at seven an over or more. The fixture's longer history, and the twelve results that preceded this one, are set out in the guide to the India–Pakistan rivalry; Babar Azam's career record is on his player page.

Dubai, 31 October: 110 for 7

New Zealand put India in again a week later, and Trent Boult took 3 for 20 with the new ball. India lost their first four wickets for 48 and were 70 for 5 when Rishabh Pant was dismissed. Ravindra Jadeja's 26 not out from 19 was the highest score of the innings; Hardik Pandya made 23 from 24 and Kohli 9 from 17. Ish Sodhi's leg spin took 2 for 17 and Mitchell Santner conceded fifteen from four.

India's 110 for 7 is among the lowest completed totals they have made in the format, and one of three of their sub-125 innings that have come in a World Cup — the wider list is on the page for India's lowest T20I totals. Daryl Mitchell made 49 from 35 and New Zealand chased it with 33 balls to spare and eight wickets standing. India had played two matches and lost both by margins of eight wickets or more.

Abu Dhabi, 3 November: 210 for 2

The third match was the first in which India's batting looked like the batting they had picked. KL Rahul made 69 from 48 and Rohit Sharma 74 from 47, putting on 140 for the first wicket — India's highest opening stand of the competition and one made after the campaign had effectively gone. Pant hit 27 not out from 13 and Pandya 35 not out from 13; India's 210 for 2 was the highest total made against Afghanistan in the tournament.

Afghanistan reached 144 for 7. Mohammed Shami took 3 for 32, R Ashwin — playing his first T20 international in more than four years — took 2 for 14 from four overs, and Bumrah and Jadeja one each. Karim Janat's unbeaten 42 from 22 came when the result was settled. Rahul's run through this tournament is described on his player page.

Scotland for 85, and Namibia by nine wickets

Scotland were bowled out for 85 on 5 November. Shami took 3 for 15 and Jadeja 3 for 15, and India used five bowlers, four of whom took wickets. The chase of 86 was finished inside seven overs: Rahul made 50 from 19 with six fours and three sixes and Rohit Sharma 30 from 16, and India won with more than thirteen overs unused.

Namibia made 132 for 8 in the last group match on 8 November. Ashwin took 3 for 20 and Jadeja 3 for 16 — the pair conceded 36 runs from eight overs between them — and India chased 133 with Rahul making 54 from 36 and Rohit 56 from 37. It was the last match of Kohli's captaincy in the format and of Shastri's coaching term.

India's batting and bowling across the five matches

Batter	Innings	Runs	Balls	Highest
KL Rahul	5	194	127	69
Rohit Sharma	5	174	115	74
Rishabh Pant	3	78	62	39
Hardik Pandya	3	69	45	35*
Virat Kohli (capt)	3	68	68	57
Suryakumar Yadav	3	42	29	25*
Ravindra Jadeja	2	39	32	26*
Bhuvneshwar Kumar	1	5	4	5*
Ishan Kishan	1	4	8	4
Shardul Thakur	1	0	3	0

India's ten batters faced 493 deliveries across the five matches and 242 of them were used by the two openers, who made 368 of the 673 runs that came off the bat.

Bowler	Overs	Runs	Wickets	Economy	Best
Jasprit Bumrah	18.4	95	7	5.09	2/10
Ravindra Jadeja	17.0	101	7	5.94	3/15
R Ashwin	12.0	63	6	5.25	3/20
Mohammed Shami	15.5	140	6	8.84	3/15
Varun Chakravarthy	11.0	71	0	6.45	—
Rahul Chahar	4.0	30	0	7.50	—
Hardik Pandya	4.0	40	0	10.00	—
Shardul Thakur	4.5	48	0	9.93	—
Bhuvneshwar Kumar	3.0	25	0	8.33	—

All twenty-six wickets India's bowlers took in the tournament came from four of them. Varun Chakravarthy, picked as the mystery-spin option after an IPL season in which he had been among the most successful bowlers in the competition, bowled eleven overs across three matches without taking one. Five of the fifteen — Chahar, Thakur, Bhuvneshwar, Kishan and Chakravarthy — finished the tournament with no wickets between them from 22.5 overs, and nine runs from fifteen balls with the bat.

The squad, and the two departures

The fifteen were Kohli as captain, Rohit Sharma as vice-captain, KL Rahul, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant and Ishan Kishan as the two keepers, Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, R Ashwin, Rahul Chahar, Varun Chakravarthy, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Shardul Thakur. Axar Patel had been named in the original squad and was moved to the reserves before the tournament, with Thakur taking his place. Shreyas Iyer and Deepak Chahar travelled as the other reserves.

The three spinners in the fifteen reflected a UAE-specific plan built on the IPL season that had just finished in the same stadiums. It produced six wickets from Ashwin in three matches and none from the two wrist spinners in four. Bumrah's seven at 5.09 an over were the most economical return by any India bowler with more than ten overs; his record across global tournaments is on his player page.

Dhoni's role as mentor was announced in September and lasted the length of the competition; he had retired from international cricket in August 2020 and the appointment was for this tournament alone. His playing record is set out on his player page, and Kohli's, including the captaincy years that ended here, on his.

What went wrong, stated plainly

India were beaten twice by sides that bowled better with the new ball. In the two defeats India were 6 for 2 against Pakistan and 40 for 3 against New Zealand; in the three wins they lost four wickets in total across fifty overs of batting. Shaheen Shah Afridi and Trent Boult both took top-order wickets in their opening spells, and India had no batter capable of rebuilding at better than a run a ball once that happened.

The bowling side of it is simpler still. Against Pakistan and New Zealand, India's attack took two wickets in forty overs. Against Afghanistan, Scotland and Namibia it took twenty-four in thirty-eight. The team that beat three sides ranked well below them was not a different team from the one that lost to the two above them, but the games in which the ball did something and the games in which it did not were, on this evidence, entirely different problems.

Rohit Sharma took the T20 captaincy afterwards and Rahul Dravid the coaching job, and the reconstruction that followed reached a semi-final in Australia the next year. The full sequence of India's campaigns is covered in the guide to India's T20 international history and in the T20 World Cup archive; the domestic game that feeds it is on the cricket in India hub.

Sources and method

Scores, individual innings, bowling figures and dismissal details were compiled from ball-by-ball records of the 2021 ICC Men's T20 World Cup, supplemented for the Abu Dhabi match against Afghanistan by the published scorecard, which is the source for every figure quoted from that game. Group 2 standings and net run rates come from the tournament's official table.

Batting and bowling tables cover only India's five matches. The batting table counts innings in which a player faced at least one delivery rather than matches in the eleven, because several members of the squad were selected without batting; the bowling table counts overs sent down. Economy is runs conceded per six legal deliveries, with wides and no-balls charged to the bowler. Where a return is zero the best-figures column is left blank rather than filled.

Squad composition, the reserve list and the mentor appointment follow the BCCI announcements made in September 2021. Statements about why a match turned — the toss and dew at Dubai, the timing of the New Zealand result that confirmed elimination — are drawn from contemporary reporting rather than computed. Figures current as of 20 August 2026.