Stats - India go faster, bigger, stronger in magical T20I year

India ended their 11-year ICC trophy drought in 2024 with the T20 World Cup win - their second, after winning the inaugural one in 2007. It came in a year in which India found immense success in the format, wherever they played.

They won all five bilateral T20I series they played this year, and lost only two matches - one of them played a week after their World Cup win with a fairly depleted line-up in Harare.

Overall, India won 22 of the 26 completed T20Is they played in 2024 outright. They also won the two matches they tied via Super Over. And they lost only two, including the second match of the latest series in South Africa.

All of that added up to a win percentage of 92.31, including the two Super Over wins.

It's the highest win percentage for any team in a calendar year in men's T20Is, bettering Pakistan's 89.47 in 2018, when they won 17 out of the 19 they played.

Only one team across all men's T20s have a higher win percentage in a calendar year - 93.75 by Tamil Nadu in the Indian domestic circuit in 2021, when they won 15 of the 16 they played.

India's attacking approach with the bat was a major point of difference. They hit a four or a six every 4.68 balls through the year, the second-highest for a team in a calendar year behind Australia's 4.39, also in 2024. They hit a six every 12.19 balls, their best in any year and the fourth-highest for any team in any year.

So they scored fast, but they also scored big, recording monster totals, and there were seven individual centuries - three by Sanju Samson, two by Tilak Varma, and one each by Rohit Sharma and Abhishek Sharma. That's comfortably the most by any team in a calendar year across all T20s, and they beat their own record from last year in T20Is.

India crossed the 200-run mark each time someone scored a century - in fact, they got there nine times this year. No team had posted more than seven such totals in men's T20s in a year prior to this. The mammoth totals got India an overall run rate of 9.55, the second-highest for a men's T20I team in a calendar year (minimum 15 matches) behind Australia's 9.87 this year.

All of this was possible because India went hard, taking risks and not taking a backward step, from the get-go. India's top-five batters had a collective strike rate of 135.08 in their first ten balls this year. It's the third-highest strike rate for the top five of any team in a calendar year where they played 15 or more men's T20Is (where ball-by-ball data is available). Australia's top five struck at 148.51 in 2024 across 19 matches, while Malaysia's top five had a strike rate of 136.24 in 20 T20Is in 2022.

A total of 11 India batters scored 200-plus runs in 2024, of whom eight had strike rates of over 150. There have been 57 cases of India's batters scoring 200-plus runs in men's T20Is in a calendar year until 2023, but only 11 of them at a strike rate of 150 or more.

The fast scoring this year came with consistency. Five of the eight batters with 150-plus strike rates in 2024 also had averages of 40 or more, while there were only four such instances until 2023.

How about the other 20 overs?

India bowled their opponents out in ten of their 26 matches this year, the joint-third-highest by any team in a calendar year in men's T20Is.

Uganda top the list with 19 out of 33 in 2023, while Japan did it in 12 of 25 games this year. India also bowled out their opponents on ten occasions in 2022, but that was across 39 innings.

India took 8.39 wickets on an average per innings this year, the second-best ratio for any team in a calendar year where they played 15 or more matches, behind Uganda's 8.49 in 2023.

India won by a margin of 100-plus runs three times in 2024, which they had achieved only four times until 2023.

This year also contained two of India's top-five biggest wins by balls remaining, and one of their only two ten-wicket wins in the format.