Delhi: No team could win the T20 World Cup twice consecutively but Team India also made this record. Seeing the manner in which India won its last three matches of the 2026 T20 World Cup, anyone can easily say that defeating this team in this form is a very difficult challenge for any team. After all, what is that one factor that makes Team India different from all the other teams and the best? Most experts answer this question by taking the name of IPL, i.e. the world’s most successful and best-contested professional T20 league. It was even written that in IPL, the competition between the teams is so fierce that it seems that winning IPL is more difficult than winning the T20 World Cup.
It is because of IPL that such young talent is continuously emerging in India who are especially getting ready to play T20. That is why in the bench strength of Team India, there is a long list of such players who could have easily joined any other team. Had players like Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, Sarfaraz Khan, Jitesh Sharma, Vaibhav Suryavanshi or Ryan Parag been out of India, they would have been playing T20 Internationals continuously.
Therefore, if it is being said that IPL laid the foundation of India’s T20 dominance then it is not wrong. The results of the investments made in IPL over the years are visible. It is true that in the pursuit of T20 mastery, India has moved away from traditional cricket and the focus in the academy too on producing players who can get a place in IPL teams will also lead to losses, but at the moment everyone is looking at the success of the T20 system.
IPL has been playing for many years, so why was the success of this system not seen earlier? The answer to this is that it took many years for the cricket played in the IPL to improve and to bring enthusiasm for such cricket among a new generation of T20 players in India. Whether India wins the title or not, the T20 system created because of IPL is working.
Especially the change that India has shown in playing T20 from the 2024 IPL is surprising. IPL has become like a ‘conveyor belt’ which is continuously bringing out the ‘finished product’ for T20. Even a talent like Jasprit Bumrah was first discovered by the IPL system, after identifying that talent he improved it and not only his IPL team, India also got such a match winner, whom even the old veteran bowlers of Pakistan are forced to praise. Mumbai Indians started Bumrah’s career in this T20 format only. He inherited Team India.
By the way, did you note what was the score of IPL teams in the T20 World Cup winning team? If we look at that score, it reflects not the success of any one IPL team but the success of the entire IPL system. Every IPL team is a nursery for nurturing talent. Mumbai Indians did not win the last IPL title but 4 of their players were in the team that won this T20 World Cup while champion RCB did not have even one. Not only RCB, Rajasthan Royals and even Lucknow team, no player was in the team that won the T20 World Cup.
Captain Surya Kumar Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya and Tilak Verma from Mumbai Indians, Axar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav from Delhi Capitals, Ishan Kishan and Abhishek Sharma from Sunrisers Hyderabad, Varun Chakraborty and Rinku Singh from Kolkata Knight Riders, Sanju Samson and Shivam Dubey from Chennai Super Kings, Washington Sundar and Mohammed Siraj from Gujarat Titans and Arshdeep Singh from Punjab Kings were in this team.
From this perspective, Mumbai Indians have once again emerged as ‘today’s nursery’ for Indian cricket. This representation of this IPL team is proof that they not only have a better system of identifying talent, they also hone it. It is not that there is any flaw in the systems of Royal Challengers Bangalore, Rajasthan Royals or Lucknow Super Giants. Rajasthan Royals’ training academy is also running outside India and they are also preparing T20 products for foreign teams. Sanju Samson has been included in this list from Chennai Super Kings but he always considers himself a ‘product’ of Rajasthan Royals. Therefore, there is no deficiency from any team’s side.
The players and systems of T20 are the most talked about in modern cricket. Even after this victory of India, many experts started comparing T20 World Cup and IPL, despite knowing that T20 World Cup is a big international tournament while IPL is a commercial tournament in which earning money from cricket is the biggest goal. Therefore, there is really no comparison between them. It can definitely be said that IPL is preparing that talent which when shines in the T20 World Cup, turns its and its team’s cricket graph upwards.
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