GUTS AND GLORY

Indian sport delivered historic victories and new heroes, but rapid commercialisation, weak governance and corruption scandals exposed its fragility, proving that sporting greatness without accountability is ultimately unsustainable

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It was a decade in which Indian sport experienced a rare convergence of triumph and turbulence. Victories lifted national confidence, individual athletes rewrote gendered and cultural expectations, and cricket reinvented itself as a global entertainment industry. At the same time, scandal, corruption and excess revealed the cost of rapid commercialisation.

The high point came in April 2011, when India lifted the ICC Cricket World Cup at the Wankhede Stadium. Twenty-eight years after Kapil Dev’s team had stunned the world, Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s side delivered a victory that felt both historic and inevitable. Dhoni’s calm leadership, the emergence of a new core of players and a home crowd’s emotional crescendo turned the final into a generational moment. The image of Sachin Tendulkar being carried on teammates' shoulders symbolised not just a win, but the closing of a circle that had defined Indian cricket for two decades.

That victory had been foreshadowed earlier in the decade by India’s breakthrough at the inaugural ICC World Twenty20 in 2007. A young, underestimated team, led by a rookie captain, embraced the shortest format of the game with fearless intent. The title did more than add a trophy. It marked a cultural shift, giving Indian cricket a new generation of decision-makers and accelerating the sport's transformation into a fast-paced, television-driven spectacle.