The India Men’s National Cricket Team, also known as the ‘Men in Blue’ or ‘Team India’, represents India in international cricket events.
They have twice won the Cricket World Cup – first in 1983 and again in 2011. Other wins include the 2002 and 2013 Champions Trophy. They also won the 2007 T20 World Cup. They have also won the Asia Cup 7 times, most recently in 2018.
The team is coached by Rahul Dravid and in 2023, they are captained by Rohit Sharma. The team is governed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India.
In 1848, the first cricket Club in Mumbai was formed by the Parsi community which was called the Oriental Cricket Club. It was the first cricket club formed in India.
In 1721, the first cricket match was played in India which was played by a group of sailors.
First Test & Series Win
It took India 30 years to win their first Test in 1931.
In 1952, India won against England at Madras. In the same year, India won their first Test series in a match against Pakistan.
| Country |
India
|
| Founded | 1932 |
| Nickname | Men in Blue |
| Captain | Rohit Sharma |
| Coach | Rahul Dravid |
| Website | www.bcci.tv |
| Follow This Team | |
Early History
During the early 1700s, the British started playing cricket in India, and in 1721 the first match was played.
The Indian cricket team continued to display improvement in their game during the early 1950s. In 1956, they had a series win against New Zealand.
That win over New Zealand was their first-ever Test series win.
The Emergence of the Quartet & Win in West Indies
In the 1970s, the Indian spin quartet comprising Srinivas Venkatraghavan, Bhagwat Chandrashekhar, E.A.S. Prasanna, and Bishen Singh Bedi led the team.
In the same era, Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Vishwanath emerged as two of the best Indian batsmen ever.
During the series against the West Indies, Gavaskar scored 774 runs and that was responsible for India’s first-ever Test victory in the Caribbean.
That match was played at the Queen’s Park Oval in the Port of Spain.
1983 World Cup
Team India’s first big achievement came in ODI cricket came in 1983 when they lifted the Cricket World Cup for the first time.
After having bowed out in the first round at the 1975 and 1979 World Cups, India started their campaign in 1983 well with a shock win over the West Indies.
They were then reduced to 36/6 against Zimbabwe but dazzling innings of 175* by Kapil Dev helped them through to a score of 266 and an easy win in the end and another victory over Australia took them to the semi-finals.
In a stunning turn of events, India’s medium-pacers led by Kapil Dev helped them bowl West Indies out for 140 and clinch the title.
Continued Success
The win gave the Men in Blue the confidence to face off against international opponents and in 1985, they won the World Championship of Cricket title under the leadership of Sunil Gavaskar.
Around the same time, they also kept winning the Asia Cup. They won it for the first time in 1984 and again in 1988. They would go on to win it 5 more times.
1990s and 2000s
By 1990, Anil Kumble had joined the set-up as well and would go on to play for nearly a couple of decades. He would also go on to become one of the three all-time spinning greats of the world.
Between 1996 and 2000, Indian captaincy changed hands multiple times. Mohammad Azharuddin was substituted by Tendulkar as the skipper but at the start of 1998 Tendulkar gave up the captaincy and Azharuddin was assigned the job again.
In 2000, John Wright was appointed as the first ever foreign coach for India and they went on to defeat the Australian team in 2001.
In the 2003-04 season, India drew a Test series 1-1 with the world champions Australia. That season, they also won a One day International and Test series against Pakistan.
Wright was replaced by Greg Chappell as the coach while Rahul Dravid took over the captaincy.
In what was India’s worst World Cup performance since the 1992 World Cup, India failed to reach the second round of the tournament in 2007.
They lost to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and were knocked out of the tournament in the first round.
A few months later, Dravid resigned as captain.
Under MS Dhoni, India’s new captain, the team went on to win the first Twenty20 World Cup hosted by South Africa.
ICL & the IPL
The Indian Cricket League was formed in 2007 by the Zee Group and they tried to sign up a plethora of cricketers from India and overseas to try and challenge the BCCI stronghold.
The ICL was a T20 league, and the Indian cricket board, looking at the prospect of losing their hold, banned those cricketers associated with the league. In the meantime they also started their cricket league, the Indian Premier League in 2008.
The 2011 World Cup
Under Dhoni’s leadership, India also went on to win the 2011 edition of the 50-over World Cup.
On their way to the final, they edged out Australia in the quarter-finals, and Pakistan in the semi-finals, before crushing Sri Lanka in a power-packed performance in the finals at Wankhede in Mumbai.
Dhoni hit the winning runs in that tournament by smashing a six off Nuwan Kulasekara to clinch the victory.
Gary Kirsten took on coaching responsibilities and is hailed as one of the best to coach India. After the World Cup win, he did not renew his contract because of family reasons.
Former England coach Duncan Fletcher took over.
2013 Champions Trophy
The Dhoni-Fletcher combination also saw India win the 2013 Champions Trophy.
2014 & 2016 T20 World Cup
Following the 2013 Champions Trophy win, India saw a period of what-ifs as far as their record in white-ball cricket is concerned.
They won all their matches in the group stage of the 2015 World Cup and then beat Bangladesh in a controversial quarterfinal to make it to the last-four stage.
In the semi-final, however, hosts Australia pounded them to reach the final.
This had been preceded by heartbreak at the T20 World Cup when India looked like the favorites to win the 2014 edition but fell short in the final.
Sri Lanka avenged their defeat at the hands of India in 2011 by winning the title in a low-scoring final.
Then in the home World T20 in 2016, India edged out Australia and Bangladesh and crushed Pakistan in the league stages. But they lost to the West Indies in a high-scoring semi-final.
Dhoni resigned from captaincy in Tests during the 2014-15 series giving Virat Kohli the captaincy.
Late 2010s and Early 2020s
In 2019, the team made it to the semifinals of the World Cup but lost to New Zealand.
They also made it to the 2021 ICC World Test Championship Final but again lost to the Kiwis. The team qualified for the semi-finals in the 2022 T20 World Cup but lost to England.
Indian Cricket Team Records
Top Test Run-Scorers
- Sachin Tendulkar: 15921
- Rahul Dravid: 13288
- Sunil Gavaskar: 10122
- VVS Laxman: 8781
- Virender Sehwag: 8586
Top ODI Run-Getters
- Sachin Tendulkar: 18426
- Virat Kohli: 11520
- Sourav Ganguly: 11363
- Rahul Dravid: 10889
- MS Dhoni: 10773
Top Test Wicket-Takers
- Anil Kumble: 619
- Kapil Dev: 434
- Harbhajan Singh: 417
- R Ashwin: 350
- Zaheer Khan: 311
Top ODI Wicket-Takers
- Anil Kumble: 337
- Javagal Srinath: 315
- Ajit Agarkar: 288
- Zaheer Khan: 282
- Harbhajan Singh: 269
Tournament Wins:
- World Cup: 1983, 2011
- Champions Trophy: 2002 (Joint-Winners), 2013
- T20 World Cup: 2007
- Asia Cup: 1984, 1988, 1990-91, 1995, 2010, 2016 (T20), 2018
