Five years, and the wrong country
The men's T20 World Cup went missing for half a decade. The 2020 edition, due in Australia, fell to the pandemic. The 2021 event belonged to India, and the BCCI kept the hosting rights, but the cricket itself was moved to the United Arab Emirates and Oman because staging it at home was not realistic. So it played out in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and Muscat, in stadiums that were close to empty for much of the first fortnight, immediately after the back half of an IPL season contested on the same square metres of turf. Total attendance across 45 matches was 378,895.
The toss did too much of the talking
Twelve of the thirteen games at Dubai International Cricket Stadium were won by the side batting second. Nineteen of the thirty Super 12 matches went the same way. Evening dew made the ball skid on and the bowlers' grip unreliable, and captains stopped pretending the coin was incidental. It did not ruin the cricket. It did shape it, and both semi-finals and the final were won by the chasing team.
Pakistan's ten wickets
Pakistan's opening Super 12 game against India in Dubai ended something that had stood since 1992. India had never lost to Pakistan at a World Cup in either format. Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan chased 152 without being separated, and Pakistan won by ten wickets. They then won all five of their Super 12 matches, which made what followed harder to take. In the semi-final, again in Dubai, they had Australia five down and were an over from the final when Matthew Wade hit Shaheen Shah Afridi for three consecutive sixes. New Zealand had done something similar to England in Abu Dhabi the night before, overhauling 167 with an over to spare.
Australia, finally
Australia had lost the 2010 final and had spent the decade since looking unconvinced by international T20 cricket. They picked David Warner despite his franchise dropping him mid-IPL weeks earlier, and he finished as player of the tournament. In the final, Kane Williamson made 85 from 48 balls, matching Marlon Samuels's record for a men's final, and New Zealand's 172 for 4 looked defendable for roughly six overs. Josh Hazlewood's 3 for 16 had kept the total in range. Mitchell Marsh's 77 not out from 50 balls then made the chase look like a net session, and Australia finished it with seven balls unused.
New Zealand had won the inaugural World Test Championship in June. This was their second global final in five months and their first in the short format. For Australia it was a first men's T20 World Cup, which left England as the only side to have won it more than once until that year. The tournament also widened quietly at the bottom: Namibia reached the Super 12 at their first attempt, Scotland beat Bangladesh in Muscat, and neither result landed as the shock it once would have been.