India and Pakistan had to see the day of 17 March 2007Image Credit source: PTI/Getty Images
The most special thing about any ICC tournament is not only that many teams play together in it and in the end one team becomes the champion. This is its foundation. But what makes it even more special is the uncertainty. It is almost certain that only the big teams will do wonders and one of them will become the champion, but before that, some surprising results are seen. Such results have increased in the last few years and this time everyone’s senses were going to be blown away on the very first day of T20 World Cup 2026. Something like this kept happening, which was seen about 19 years ago.
Pakistan narrowly escaped
T20 World Cup started in India and Sri Lanka from Saturday 7th February. The very first match of the tournament took place in Colombo, where Netherlands in front of Pakistan Was a team of. There were a lot of eyes on Pakistan. Firstly, the team has created a ruckus due to the boycott of the match against India. Secondly, in the last World Cup, it played a big role in being defeated by a new team like USA and getting thrown out of the tournament. This time Pakistan eliminated the possibility of any upset and won the match.
But, they had to make papads to win and only one mistake from the Netherlands side saved them from defeat. Pakistan needed 29 runs in the last 2 overs. But on the second ball of this over, Max O’Dowd dropped the catch of Faheem Ashraf and this cost him heavily. Faheem was on only 7 runs at that time. In the end, Faheem scored a total of 24 runs from that over and ultimately scored an unbeaten 29 runs in 11 balls to help Pakistan win by 3 wickets. If he had been caught, Pakistan’s defeat was certain.
Team India also faces bad fate
Now most of the people expected such performance from Pakistan but Team India surprised even more. The current winning Indian team is considered a contender to win the title for the second consecutive time and is also the strongest team. But he also lost his sweat in the very first match. Just 4 hours after the Pakistan match, the Indian team was on the field at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai against the same USA, which had defeated Pakistan last time.
Although, he is not considered to be a big threat for Team India, but once the match started, the situation was different. Team India batted first and within no time its 6 wickets fell for only 77 runs. This shocked everyone and the danger of defeat was looming right from the beginning. Meanwhile, USA made a mistake when Indian captain Suryakumar Yadav dropped the catch. Surya was on only 15 runs at that time and finally he played an explosive inning of 84 runs in 49 balls, taking the team to 161 runs. This proved costly for USA and they lost by 29 runs.
The world was shocked 19 years ago
In this way, Team India and Pakistan narrowly escaped becoming victims of major upsets on the same day. If both had lost, this 17 year old history would have repeated itself. In fact, in the ODI World Cup 2007, India and Pakistan had to face a sensational defeat on the same day. It was the day of March 17, when on one hand Bangladesh created an upset by defeating India and on the other hand Ireland surprised Pakistan by defeating them. Something similar could have happened this time too but the players of Netherlands and USA missed this opportunity by making similar mistakes.