2009 T20 World Cup

Result

Player of the Match (Final)

Shahid Afridi, Pakistan

Tournament format

12 teams in 4 groups of 3, round robin, top 2 per group advancing to a cross-seeded 8-team "Super 8s" stage (two groups combining top finishers from different first-round groups). Semi-finals then a final; a Super Over was in place as the tiebreaker rule at every knockout stage, though it was not needed in this final.

Full match archive

Every match of the 2009 tournament, not just the final — all 26 group-stage, Super 8 and semi-final matches. See all 26 matches →

Final: match context

Pakistan won their maiden global Twenty20 title at a sold-out Lord's, beating Sri Lanka by 8 wickets in the second World Twenty20 final -- and the second in a row to be contested entirely between Asian nations. Sri Lanka, sent in to bat after losing the toss, endured a torrid start: opener Tillakaratne Dilshan -- who would go on to be named Player of the Tournament with 317 runs -- fell in the first over attempting his trademark scoop shot off the tournament's find, teenage left-armer Mohammad Amir. Sri Lanka slumped to 2 for 2 and then 32 for 4 before captain Kumar Sangakkara steadied the innings, building a 68-run stand with Angelo Mathews. A costly final over from Amir, which went for 17 runs, helped lift Sri Lanka to a competitive-looking 138 for 6 from their 20 overs. Pakistan's reply started confidently: Kamran Akmal and Shahzaib Hasan put on 48 for the first wicket before Akmal was stumped off the bowling of veteran spinner Sanath Jayasuriya in the seventh over. From there Shahid Afridi took control, striking freely to accelerate the chase and finishing the match with the winning runs, sealing victory with more than an over to spare. Afridi's all-round contribution -- restricting Sri Lanka with the ball earlier in the innings before finishing the game with the bat -- made him an easy choice for Player of the Match. The title carried enormous significance for Pakistan cricket. It arrived less than four months after the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan team bus in Lahore in March 2009, an atrocity that had left Pakistan unable to host international cricket at home for years afterwards and cast a shadow over the team's ability to compete on the road at all. Winning the World Twenty20 -- Pakistan's first ICC global trophy since the 1992 Cricket World Cup -- offered a rare unifying moment for a cricketing nation navigating that crisis, and stood as a pointed, poignant response given the identity of the beaten finalists. For Sri Lanka, it was a second successive T20 World Cup final appearance without a title, a frustration that would recur again at the very next edition before their eventual breakthrough in 2014. Twenty20 international cricket, still barely two years into its life as a global event, had now produced two finals defined as much by their surrounding context and drama as by the cricket itself.

Sources

• Wikipedia: 2009 ICC World Twenty20 final
• Wikipedia: 2009 ICC World Twenty20