By India’s men’s national cricket team’s recent successes in both one day and five-day versions have given rise to the hope of India winning the ICC trophies scheduled in the near future.
India’s men’s national cricket team’s last ICC title was the winning of the 2013 ICC Champions Trophy. India has won two editions of ICC Champions Trophy so far, which were in 2002 and 2013. In 2013, India won the ICC Champions Trophy, under the captainship of MS Dhoni and in 2002, India and Sri Lanka were declared as joint winners of the trophy as the final between India and Sri Lanka were washed twice due to rain, without producing any conclusive result.
Only India and Australia have won the prestigious tournament twice each, while South Africa, New Zealand, Sri Lanka (shared with India), West Indies and Pakistan have won one edition of the tournament each.
Here it deserves a mention that India’s men’s national cricket team suffered a number of setbacks in ICC tournaments since the last decade. India was runners-up in T20I Men’s World Cup in 2014, but in the 2015 Men’s ODI World Cup, in the 2016 Men’s T20I World Cup, in the 2019 Men’s ODI World Cup, and in the 2022 Men’s T20I World Cup, Indian team experienced exit in the semi-final stage. India reached the finals of the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy but there our team lost to its arch rival Pakistan’s team by a sizeable margin of 180 runs.
After the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy, ICC Champions Trophy was scrapped in line with ICC’s objective of having only one pinnacle tournament for each of the three formats of international cricket.However, in November 2021, the ICC announced that the ICC Champions Trophy would be returning in 2025.The ninth edition of the tournament would be hosted by Pakistan.
In the forthcoming ICC Champions Trophy, India has a decent chance of becoming the champion. India’s superb performance in the much-talked about Men’s ODI 2023 World Cup where India won all the 10 matches before the final but lost in the final to Australia by a significant margin of six wickets, gives ample indication of the terrific form the India’s men’s ODI team is in.
In the recent past, the Indian captain Rohit Sharma expressed a strong belief in his team’s ability to win an elusive ICC title after a decade of drought.
Rohit’s captaincy style seems to encourage positive and fearless cricket where his team players are induced to play their natural game with freedom. He cares much more about winning trophies than about individual statistics, which is another point in his favour.
His moves in the field often sparkle with cricket wisdom. Although leadership of Rohit has not made India get an ICC title, he has been instrumental in scripting huge success for India in a number of other tournaments and series. India has won Asia Cup twice under Rohit Sharma’s captaincy. India has won Asia Cup twice under captaincy of only two other captains -MS Dhoni and Mohammad Azharuddin.
However, if Rohit Sharma, who currently captains the India’s national cricket team in all formats, remains captain in the forthcoming ICC Champions Trophy, he would need to rely heavily on the bowling skills of Bumrah and Shami and on the batting prowess of Virat Kohli, Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubhan Gill for winning the ICC Champions Trophy in 2025.
Then there is 2023-2025 ICC World Test Championship, which is the third edition of the ICC World Test Championship. It is an ongoing tournament of Test Cricket, comprising 27 series and 69 matches in the league stage. It began in June 2023 with The Ashes and is scheduled to culminate in June 2025 with the final match planned to be played at Lord’s.
The 4-1 drubbing that India gave to England in the recently held test series has improved India’s prospects of reaching the final of the 2023-2025 ICC World Test Championship. India is on the top of WTC 2023-2025 points table with 68.52 point percentage, which is highest among all teams. India has 10 matches to play before the WTC 2023-2025 final commences, which include 2 test matches against Bangladesh, 3 tests against New Zealand and five test matches against Australia.
India needs to win only 5 of these 10 tests to get itself a berth in the WTC 2023-25 final. Thus India has a fair chance of reaching the WTC 2023-25 final. However, to win the final, the Indian team requires great deal of temperament and nerves in addition to cricketing talent.
Then there is the 2024 ICC Men’s T20I World Cup, which will be the ninth edition of Men’s T20I World Cup. It is scheduled to be co-hosted by the West Indies and the United States from 1st-29th June 2024. The tournament also has the potential for Indian team winning its first ICC title after a long gap of 11 years.
In fact, going by India’s men’s cricket team’s impressive performance in the recent years, we can hope of India winning all these three forthcoming ICC tournaments in three different formats
