Harbhajan Singh compared Rohit Sharma’s 2024 T20 World Cup winning squad to that of MS Dhoni’s 2007 T20 World Cup winning team and deduced that the 2007 T20 World Cup win was better than the 2024 one.
The 2007 T20 World Cup was the first edition of the tournament and the Indian team was captained for the first time by MS Dhoni. Ajit Agarkar, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, and Harbhajan Singh were the only senior players in a team filled with youngsters.
On the other hand, Rohit Sharma’s 2007 T20 World Cup was filled with a good mix of experience and youth. The recent T20 World Cup win also ended India’s ICC trophy drought that started in 2013.
“Overall, if you see the 2024 T20 World Cup winning squad had more match winners than our team (2007 T20 World Cup). Back then it was a very new format for us. We were playing for the first time. We didn’t had much clue about T20 cricket. We went with the flow and kept on winning.
“In 2007, we didn’t had any big names. Barring Yuvi (Yuvraj Singh), Viru (Virender Sehwag), myself and Ajit (Agarkar), most of them were new kids on the block. Dhoni (MS) was captaining for the first time,” Harbhajan Singh said on Taruwar Kohli’s podcast.
He said that the 2007 T20 World Cup Champions did not have that luxury, and Dhoni’s team had little experience with the format, which had only debuted at the highest level in 2005.
The 2024 T20 World Cup winning squad had more match winners than our team: Harbhajan Singh
Harbhajan Singh emphasized that the 2024 T20 World Cup-winning Indian cricket team was packed with match-winners, including skipper Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah, Arshdeep Singh, Hardik Pandya, and Suryakumar Yadav, but Dhoni’s young army broke new ground in T20 cricket.
Harbhajan stated that in 2007, they did not have many seasoned campaigners, except a handful, whereas the present squad is packed of match-winning players from top to bottom.
“Now you see the names in 2024, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Hardik Pandya… all of them are big match-winners. Then you have Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant, and Axar Patel. I feel people don’t talk more about Axar. You see his performance in the final. It was immense. Arshdeep Singh and Jasprit Bumrah were throughout excellent. All of them are matchwinners. They played excellent cricket in the tournament,” Harbhajan Singh added.
India joined the Elite list of teams winning the T20 World Cup two times with their 2024 T20 World Cup win, joining West Indies and England.
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