6 days Ago By Chankesh Rao
The Indian cricket team achieved a resounding victory in their last T20I of 2024, defeating South Africa by a significant margin of 135 runs on Friday, November 15th at the New Wanderers Stadium in Johannesburg. This win sealed a 3-1 series victory against the Proteas, marking the end of a remarkable year for the team in the shortest format of the game. While the Men in Blue's triumph in the 2024 T20 World Cup under Rohit Sharma's captaincy will be remembered for years to come, the team displayed near-flawless performance in the T20 format throughout the year, even after Suryakumar Yadav took over as full-time captain in July.
India played a total of 26 T20Is in 2024, emerging victorious in 24 of them with only two defeats, resulting in an impressive win percentage of 92.31 for the year. The team suffered a single loss in the five-match T20I series against Zimbabwe, and the second defeat came in the second T20I against South Africa.
This exceptional year saw India set a monumental world record, becoming the first team to finish a year with a win percentage of over 90 in T20Is after playing more than 15 matches, surpassing a record previously held by Pakistan in 2018. Remarkably, India's outstanding performance ranks second in all forms of T20 cricket worldwide, with only Tamil Nadu (93.75%) surpassing them.
Karnataka (91.67% in 2019) is the only other team globally to achieve a win percentage above 90 in a year. India kicked off the year with a 3-0 victory over Afghanistan at home, followed by a flawless run at the T20 World Cup, winning all seven matches.
A second-string team led by Shubman Gill secured a 4-1 series win against Zimbabwe before achieving back-to-back 3-0 victories against Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Also read| 'Lost half my blood': Mike Tyson reveals he suffered near-death experience training for his fight against Jake Paul.
