The last World Twenty20
India had never staged a global Twenty20 event before March 2016, which by then looked like an oversight. Eight years of the IPL had made the country the format's commercial engine and its main laboratory. Sixteen teams came. Eight of them, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe among them, played a first round in Dharamshala and Nagpur for two places alongside the seeded sides in a Super 10. Nobody knew it at the time, but this was the last tournament to carry the World Twenty20 name, and the last before a five-year gap that broke the event out of its two-year rhythm for good.
Chases that kept getting bigger
The cricket was loud. Chris Gayle made 100 not out off 47 balls to beat England at the Wankhede, the fastest hundred the tournament had seen. Two days later, on the same ground, England chased 230 against South Africa and got there with two balls in hand. Afghanistan, having survived the first round, ran South Africa close and then beat West Indies by six runs in Nagpur. India's route to the semi-finals was narrower than the noise around it suggested: one run against Bangladesh in Bengaluru, then a chase against Australia in Mohali, with Virat Kohli making the whole thing look calmer than it was. He finished as player of the tournament. Tamim Iqbal, whose Bangladesh side went out in the group, finished as its leading run-scorer with 295.
Nineteen off the last over
England reached the Eden Gardens final by taking New Zealand apart in Delhi. West Indies got there by chasing 193 against India at the Wankhede. The final itself was scrappy for an hour and then unforgettable. England were 23 for 3 before Joe Root's 54 dragged them to 155 for 9. Marlon Samuels answered with 85 not out from 66 balls, the highest score anyone had made in a World T20 final, and even that left nineteen runs required from Ben Stokes's last over with Carlos Brathwaite on strike. Brathwaite hit the first ball for six. Then the second, the third and the fourth. Sixty-six thousand people were in the ground, Ian Bishop was shouting at everyone to remember the name, and Stokes was on his haunches on the square.
What it left behind
West Indies became the first men's side to win the title twice, four years after their first, and did it with a squad in open dispute with its own board over pay and selection. That has aged into the tournament's second story: a team at the absolute peak of its powers in this format, and an administration that could not hold it together long enough to matter. Stokes recovered, and within three years was the central figure in England's own World Cup win. The competition took five years to come back, and when it did in 2021 it had a new name, a new structure and a different centre of gravity.