Parallel Universe: If Pakistan had won the 2007 World T20

[Varun]

As recently as the Champions Trophy 2017, we witnessed what a defeat to the arch rivals can do. Relative smooth sailing followed by arguments between the captain and the coach and an aura of everything being wrong with Indian cricket after Pakistan slid the rug from under them at The Oval.

So rewind the clock to the 2007 World T20. If Misbah had connected the scoop shot better to send it beyond Sreesanth, or decided to smash one down the ground instead, how would history have panned out?

Dhoni laid the foundations for his years long captaincy stint on the back of this win. If he couldn't pull it off, would he have been the next man in line to take the test captaincy? Would he have the power to eject stalwarts like Dravid and Ganguly from the ODI team? Would the IPL have gone ahead in 2008 as it did? And what of the overall effects on Indian cricket? Badly hankering for a trophy win (the last one came about in Natwest 2002), and still reeling from the premature knockout from the 50-over World Cup earlier in the year, it would have been another hammer blow to the team - potentially relegating them to mid table at best.

And what of Misbah and Pakistan? He used the momentum and new found fame to clobber heaps of runs in the test tour of India that followed, but the whole of Pakistan could have rallied and won those games (Tests and ODIs) against a dejected Indian team instead. Perhaps Pakistan would be the team who will snipe past India to launch a T20 league - the PSL would have made its debut before the IPL. Misbah himself became a defensive shell of an ODI batsman going into the 2011 World Cup, but in this universe he had the afterburners on and had Pakistan reached Mohali, he wouldn't have defended ball after ball to inevitable defeat.

Both teams' fates were sealed in that T20 game. I believe if Pakistan had won it, India would have taken years to recover and at the very least, there wouldn't have been another streak of endless World T20 victories between the two teams.

What are your thoughts on the subject?

 

[NishanKonar]

Actually nothing wud have changed. Remember India sent a young team in 2007 without key seniors. While victory was sweet , defeat wud not have been so catastrophic for India - well nobody expected us to reach so far

IPL anyways was in the works before 2007 WC. It was more as a response to ICL event - but of course the 2007 WC win gave a big boost. Most Indians had little interest in T20 before the 2007 WC but after the victory it became a rage

 

[Rajdeep]

1) There would be no IPL without that T20 WC win. Just like 1983 made ODI cricket popular in India, that t20 WC was the catalyst for rising popularity of T20s in India and the reason why IPL was such an instant hit.

2) Sehwag would have been next captain of India. Remember, Dhoni was just a part time skipper in that t20 WC.

3) Both Ganguly and Dravid would have played 2011 WC, Sachin & Sehwag would have played the 2015 version.

4) Kohli would had to wait longer for his debut and Rohit Sharma would have been forgotten player by now.

Basically that t20 WC win shaped Indian cricket a lot for the next decade and half.

 

[Bhaijaan]

IPL was inevitable once the rebel ICL started and that happened before 2007 world cup. The world cup win gave Indian administrators confidence and belief in T20 cricket as a business model.

Don't know about Indian cricket but Pakistan cricket would have probably found some stability with Shoaib Malik as a world cup winning captain.

 

[naseem]

IPL would happen to curb ICL...
Dhoni might not become captain then may be after few years.
Ganguly would have played more ODIs along with Dravid...
Misbah would be revered as messiah even more...
Malik would have been a long term captain..
Gul's legacy would have been more glorified..
Asif would have a ICC winning medal ...
Nothing much....

 

[Ab Fan]

Australian domination won't have ended either.

 

[Varun]

From another source:

Denied what would have been an unexpected victory in a tournament they had actively lobbied against, India quickly loses interest in T20. Lalit Modi's idea for an "Indian Premier League" is mothballed, while MS Dhoni carries the can for failure, widely ridiculed for giving the final over to Sharma. He returns to Jharkhand, cuts his flowing mane and is never picked for India again, instead becoming a helicopter pilot in his spare time. We enter the age of Misbah the Finisher, as Pakistan's hero becomes an all-formats mainstay. He takes over the Test captaincy in early 2010, overseeing a tour of England in which the team is lauded for their sportsmanship and good conduct. The following year, Misbah is at it again, timing his late assault to perfection to knock India out of the World Cup semi-final on home soil. He retires with Pakistan holding the Test mace, and in his country's next general election, pips Imran Khan to the role of prime minister.

 

[Thunderbolt14]

Just to focus in on the Pakistan team, I am going to do my best to make some educated guesses without going too overboard. Thus I ground a lot of this speculation in what actually happened, with the aim of charting a path for Pakistan cricket.

No, I don’t believe we would have had PSL ten years earlier, or that the Pakistan team would have massively transformed. However, a few core pieces would be very different. We know for a fact how the Pakistan team selection operates - it is highly performance based with the short term in mind, highly myopic if anything. Captains are changed on a yearly basis, while even mildly performing batsmen are catapulted to stardom.

For starters, we can make the educated assumption that Misbah would very much not have been so defensive a player as he actually ended up becoming for the rest of his career — after that spectacular scoop to finish a thrilling innings, Misbah would have been the hottest property in Pakistan cricket. Dazzling finisher, the Dhoni of the universe where Dhoni was not a finisher. Aspiring Pakistani youngsters would copy that scoop shot, marketing agencies and top MNC’s would rush to sign Misbah, and Misbah grows within the Pakistan team organically, as a premier middle-order batsman in the Limited Overs lineup and as a leader as well.

Soon thereafter, he is appointed vice-captain across formats, and Misbah, playing to the crowd, works hard on that scoop shot, molding his game into a more modern batting technique than what we saw in reality. Even in real life, we have seen glimpses of Misbah’s intent in his fastest hundred for example, but with renewed confidence we see flashes of this aggression a little more often than once a decade.

After Mohammad Yousuf and Younis Khan’s Test captaincy between 2008-2009, Misbah is given the Test reigns by PCB from 2009. That is to say, Shahid Afridi never becomes Test captain in this reality. Nor does he ever step down, leading to Salman Butt succeeding him. Whichever way you chop it, Misbah is without a doubt higher than Butt in the captaincy pecking order.

There have been numerous excellent articles about the young Mohammad Amir, one of them dating back to just a few weeks ago. To summarize it would do injustice to the excellent psychological discussion, but I would like to note here about young Amir’s background, his nights spent crying, away from home and longing for his mother. Almost forcing himself beyond will to train as a bowler, his coach becoming a father figure. In real life, when thrust into the high stakes, dangerous world of Pakistan cricket, this 16-year-old gravitated towards Salman Butt as a voice he trusted - someone who spoke sensibly, showed a caring presence, and of course was his captain too.

In this reality, I argue that if Misbah was skipper of the Pakistan Test team with Salman Butt relatively not as influential, a young Mohammad Amir, longing for home and in search of a close friend and father figure, would still grow close to his educated captain who spoke sensibly, and showed a caring presence to youngsters. The difference is that this captain is Misbah, the educated, aggressive Test captain who avoids controversy and loathes fixing. Misbah tells him to steer clear of bad influences in the team, particularly Mohammad Asif, and Amir never gets as close to Salman Butt as he might have otherwise.

Asif and Butt continue fixing matches, of course. Maybe even Kamran Akmal. This much does not change. However, as Salman Butt is not the captain, he is unable to lure Amir into his circle - by the time of the 2010 Test series in England, Amir’s huge overstepping and no-ball never happen.

It is difficult to say whether the News of the World sting operation might still have been successful. It is possible. As someone who has investigated Mazhar Majeed’s personality and background thoroughly out of sheer interest, he has always struck me as a man pathologically out to secure money and power for himself. This is a man described as someone who “absolutely loved to display the control he had over the Pakistan team”. I do believe the fixing would have gone ahead anyways, and the sting operation would corroborate these facts in their video with the actual match statistics.

In other words, Butt and Asif would still be kicked out of the team, and possibly, to compensate for not having Amir’s name, Majeed mentions he has Kamran Akmal in his pocket. (This is predicated on the assumption that Kamran was part of the ring. Lots of evidence points at this being the case between conspicuously dropped catches, the Test series earlier in 2010 against Australia which Majeed also claimed he had control over, and so on).

I believe in this reality, Akmal is the third person kicked out of the team along with Asif and Butt. However, I will end my speculation here. Too many assumptions are bad for predictions, so going further would not do justice to what I believe the realities might have been. At that stage, we enter the territory of complete fiction.

I do believe for a fact Misbah’s psychology as a player, what we have seen in reality, was completely defined by that one T20 innings. He hates, loathes himself even to this day for pulling such a stupid shot - his solution, as fans have seen, was to stop taking risks altogether. He would have been a very different person, not just player - a different human altogether.

For the sake of fun speculation, though, I’ll toss around some speculation on I guess what everyone here wants to hear- Mohali, 2011. I will say this. Powered by Amir with the new ball and Misbah as finisher, Pakistan might have had a better chance of beating India. Fans would have been relieved that the incompetent Kami no longer keeps behind the wickets, and Amir would possibly have had a more successful new ball spell against Sehwag than Umar Gul. Misbah would have showed some actual intent. India might still have won to be honest. They were the far better side on the day. But no doubt, the game might have been more competitive.

Also, in 2020, I do not think Misbah the chief selector would be as defensive as he is right now. The rest is up to speculation.

 

[Mesozoic]

^^Holy moly !

POTW

 

[Thunderbolt14]

1) There would be no IPL without that T20 WC win. Just like 1983 made ODI cricket popular in India, that t20 WC was the catalyst for rising popularity of T20s in India and the reason why IPL was such an instant hit.

2) Sehwag would have been next captain of India. Remember, Dhoni was just a part time skipper in that t20 WC.

3) Both Ganguly and Dravid would have played 2011 WC, Sachin & Sehwag would have played the 2015 version.

4) Kohli would had to wait longer for his debut and Rohit Sharma would have been forgotten player by now.

Basically that t20 WC win shaped Indian cricket a lot for the next decade and half.

Good analysis, I definitely think a lot of this would be true.

 

[Mesozoic]

That game and that scoop from Misbah is the best example of how one decision at a crucial juncture can decide the next few decades of your life. Not just yours, sometimes others too.....

On topic , I think a lot of the good points have already been made by the posters above. But the biggest one....The so called brand Dhoni we see today would not have existed. India would have went the Pakistani way of chopping and changing captains. From sehwag to Yuvi , maybe even "comebacks" from Sourav and Dravid.

 

[Slog]

I genuinely believe that one shot and subsequent catch is arguably the most consequential delivery in cricket in the past 20 years.

Pakistan was the T20 WC two years later so no biggie and no Pakistani fan really rues it as they do for the 2011 semi final loss. But T20 in India May not have taken off the same way and the subsequent change in world cricket may not have happened that quickly.

 

[DeadlyVenom]

Its interesting to think about and I agree that the short term effects would have been a brief rallying of Pakistan cricket and Indians falling behind slightly....but it would have been brief.

In the long term we would be pretty much close to where we are now. The domestic indian market is huge and would have got exploited at some point for cricketing reasons.

 

[Slog]

However good point re Misbah career trajectory above. If you look At Misbah s early career, he was a dashing batsman who played at a good clip. And maybe that shot made him adopt a risk free game. But at the same time you can argue adopting a risk free game gave him the consistency in run scoring which his previous style never did so if he had kept his attack minded batting he would have always been in and out of the side.

 

[Major]

hyperbole everywhere.

India winning WT2007 had nothing to do with IPL. ICL was already proposed and after knowing how much zee was making off that, IPL would had started.

Misbah had won people over irrespective of him not finishing the game at the time. Yes, he would had made alittle more name out of it maybe.

 

[Major]

However good point re Misbah career trajectory above. If you look At Misbah s early career, he was a dashing batsman who played at a good clip. And maybe that shot made him adopt a risk free game. But at the same time you can argue adopting a risk free game gave him the consistency in run scoring which his previous style never did so if he had kept his attack minded batting he would have always been in and out of the side.

nope. People often forget that Misbah was always a defensive player in the past aswell.

He always had 2 type of gears. Block with a straight bat, or just slog it for six. Misbah was never attacking in the first place, he just knew when to and how to attack the spinners and risk it against the pacers.

People think there is a difference between Misbah of 2011 and Misbah of 2007. However, there is very little difference. Both were same.

Yes, one could argue, Misbah's hitting abilities went down abit later on in his career.

 

[Varun]

Indian cricket had a golden run between 2007 and 2011 on the back of this win and the 2007 test series victory in England.

If this was a defeat, things would/could have panned out differently.

 

[RyanRyan10]

1) There would be no IPL without that T20 WC win. Just like 1983 made ODI cricket popular in India, that t20 WC was the catalyst for rising popularity of T20s in India and the reason why IPL was such an instant hit.

2) Sehwag would have been next captain of India. Remember, Dhoni was just a part time skipper in that t20 WC.

3) Both Ganguly and Dravid would have played 2011 WC, Sachin & Sehwag would have played the 2015 version.

4) Kohli would had to wait longer for his debut and Rohit Sharma would have been forgotten player by now.

Basically that t20 WC win shaped Indian cricket a lot for the next decade and half.

Sehwag was dropped from all the formats at that time and that's why Dhoni was picked as captain for WT20.

IPL was in the works after the announcement of ICL. Ranji sides like Punjab, TN (though they still had a strong side), Hyderabad, Bengal were all weakened due to players joining ICL

India had won a test series in England just before the T20 WC.

 

[JattMaula]

I will post my response infrom other thread [MENTION=132715]Varun[/MENTION]

Eh....

I think romantic writers have over celebrated the 2007 final relevance. T20 success was cemented by all of the world cup which was a fantastic tournament overall.

Pakistan was at a different point in their nation's path. PSL, at least at home was out of the question.

IPL did get a major boost due to that win but it would have reached its heights regardless. Maybe even more organically and with fewer scandals.

Pakistan was the best t20i team in first few years of the new format. That loss was irrelevant to them in long run.

 

[silentkiller187]

Pakistan were pretty decent in t20s even after the defeat and probably were the best team for a few years, so the only thing it would have stopped were the MAUKA adverts if that

 

[Varun]

I genuinely believe that one shot and subsequent catch is arguably the most consequential delivery in cricket in the past 20 years.

On the other hand, Joginder Sharma never bowled another delivery for India again. He then became a policeman:

 

[Dulex9]

India fielded a bunch of youngsters, which some got more chances in the Indian odi side, such as R Sharma.

Without the T20 win, there would be no IPL.

 

[CadPakFan]

nope. People often forget that Misbah was always a defensive player in the past aswell.

He always had 2 type of gears. Block with a straight bat, or just slog it for six. Misbah was never attacking in the first place, he just knew when to and how to attack the spinners and risk it against the pacers.

People think there is a difference between Misbah of 2011 and Misbah of 2007. However, there is very little difference. Both were same.

Yes, one could argue, Misbah's hitting abilities went down abit later on in his career.

Little difference? From what I can recall Misbah had an ODI SR in the mid-80s up until 2009. He finished his career with a SR of 73.

 

[from_da_lost_dim3nsion]

so many ifs . I think we would've seen a different misbah than what we saw after that game he got too defensive and tiid in his approach and never could really break out of the shell . The misbah during that WC was a clutch af player . He came through for us more than a few times and it was him that even got us so close to a W in that game .

 

[nextover666666]

If Pakistan won I don't think it would change much I mean obivously people would be happy but that same 11 would have cemented their place on the team starting sheet for the next 10 years

I don't think PSL would have started from this either I just think players would maybe even let the win get to their head
Maybe they would have performed better Agaisnt India in World Cup matches had they won that game but who knows

When pak won the champions trophy final one thing I was happy about was that it was against India and I thought because they won a final in and ICC event Agaisnt India, they would no longer have a psychological effect on our players and that we would win more games Agaisnt them or atleast have close finished games

However as we saw in Asia cup and World Cup 2019 India won all three matches and won comfortably as well

So even if we won in 2007 our record Agaisnt India maybe would still be the same , more or less meaning not good lol

 

[Justcrazy]

Pakistan lost not because of Misbah but because of stupid run out of Imran Nazir , if he had stayed for 3 - 4 overs more , Pakistan would have got another 40 runs easily and match would be sealed.

 

[nextover666666]

Pakistan lost not because of Misbah but because of stupid run out of Imran Nazir , if he had stayed for 3 - 4 overs more , Pakistan would have got another 40 runs easily and match would be sealed.

Also who can forget akmals golden duck and even worse was Afridi golden duck tried to launch it for a six on ball 1 horrible was not needed if he sticked around for a bit could have been a different story

But when we look at it in the present we can always say if and or buts but reality is Pakistan didn't hold their nerve and credit to India for fighting all the way through

 

[tyron_woodley]

pakistan won the champions trophy in 2017. what happened next was a comprehensive beating in asia cup. So nothing would have changed post 2007 either..

they would have still lost the WC to india.

 

[CricketCartoons]

On the other hand, Joginder Sharma never bowled another delivery for India again. He then became a policeman:

Not just a policeman, but a DSP, as the three star insignia shows.

 

[ShoonyaSifar]

Yuvraj's 6 6s were a more magical push for mainstreaming of T20 cricket among Indian audiences. ICL had already set the base but the quality had deteriorated and fixing rumours killed it's reputation. IPL would have been the natural response irrespective of the win.

 

[Thunderbolt14]

Yuvraj's 6 6s were a more magical push for mainstreaming of T20 cricket among Indian audiences. ICL had already set the base but the quality had deteriorated and fixing rumours killed it's reputation. IPL would have been the natural response irrespective of the win.

There is no reason that IPL would have happened at all if ICL’s reputation was killed and Indians were sore over T20 cricket.

Even if IPL did happen, there is no reason it would have taken off if, again, the major market of Indian viewers saw it as a child’s game that their major stars Dravid and Ganguly did not even play the world cup for.

Further, there is no guarantee Dhoni would have become a star captain.

 

[ahmedwaqas92]

In over 23 years of watching the game, I have come to realize that Pakistan cricket doesn't get effected by either wins or losses. The insanity remains no matter if we are world champions, mace holders, T20 winners or at the bottom of the barrel. In the last two years I have the privilege to sit with some very prominent PCB administrators that go root and stem into the board. Sadly, it all boils down to the will of who is currently running the show and there are administrative worm holes which can't be touched. The wins and losses are basically the by product of the set of personnel that Pakistan is fielding at the national level and how determined they are as individual athletes - That's about it. So NO, even if we would've won the 2007 World Cup, the resulting crop of players and the instances that occurred subsequent to it would not have changed anything in Pakistan cricket.

I understand that this is quite a bleak representation of things but trust me, I have made it as less painful as I could. Wasim's really trying to turn this ship around but there is just too much Garbage in the board, even today, which makes it impossible to make any substantial changes in MINDSET. This theory that administrative changes would somehow magically fix things, to some extent it's true, but how do you change the mindset of an entire plethora of the cricketing fraternity. The mindset is embedded so deep that pick any rational name from the prominent figures in Pakistan cricket right now and a part of them would subscribe to the 'MINDSET' I am talking about here.

This thread is decent escapism but the reality at least for now is quite different.

 

[ShoonyaSifar]

There is no reason that IPL would have happened at all if ICL’s reputation was killed and Indians were sore over T20 cricket.

Even if IPL did happen, there is no reason it would have taken off if, again, the major market of Indian viewers saw it as a child’s game that their major stars Dravid and Ganguly did not even play the world cup for.

Further, there is no guarantee Dhoni would have become a star captain.

IPL was officially launched on September 13, 2007 and had already started to generate immense interest.