OTD | 16 years since India won famous bowl-out over Pakistan in inaugural T20 World Cup

On this day in 2007, India played their second-only T20I game. Before this, they played their debut T20I game against South Africa in December 2007. Meanwhile, after their opening game against Scotland was washed out, India played against their arch-rivals, Pakistan. In what was a must-win game for both teams (as both teams hate losing against each other). Meanwhile, in this game, the Men In Blue lost the toss and batted first.

They had a poor start as they lost four wickets for 36 runs. Thanks to the efforts from Robin Uthappa (50), MS Dhoni (33), Irfan Pathan (20), and Ajit Agarkar (14*) helped the team reach 141/9 at the end of their innings. Mohammad Asif took four wickets on a seaming wicket of Durban. 

In reply, Pakistan was also struggling as Indian bowlers took four wickets and 47 runs. Misbah-ul-Haq scored a half-century and kept the team in the game. However, in the end, he failed to score the winning run and was run out on the last ball of the game. This led to the game ending in a tie.

However, at the time, Super Over wasn’t available and bowl outs used to decide the winner if a T20I game was tied. As revealed later, Shoaib Malik, Pakistan skipper at the time, had no idea about the bowl outs. On the other hand, the Indian team management, led by MS Dhoni and others were preparing for the same before and during the tournament.

As revealed by the Indian players in different interviews, Dhoni had asked some players who didn’t bowl much to prepare for this situation. Talking about the bowl out, India managed to hit the stumps three times. On the other hand, Pakistan, despite using their frontline bowlers failed to hit even once.

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