2010 T20 World Cup

Result

Player of the Match (Final)

Craig Kieswetter, England

Tournament format

12 teams in 4 groups of 3, round robin, feeding an 8-team "Super 8s" stage split into two cross-seeded groups. Semi-finals then a final, played across venues in Barbados, Guyana and St Lucia.

Full match archive

Every match of the 2010 tournament, not just the final — all 26 group-stage, Super 8 and semi-final matches. See all 26 matches →

Final: match context

England won their first-ever ICC world title in any format of the game, beating Australia by 7 wickets at Kensington Oval in Barbados to claim the 2010 World Twenty20. Sent in to field first after losing the toss, England restricted Australia to 147 for 6. The Australian top order struggled against England's new-ball bowling: Shane Watson was caught for just 2, David Warner was run out for the same score, and wicketkeeper Brad Haddin fell for 1. Michael Clarke made 27 before being brilliantly caught by a diving Paul Collingwood off Graeme Swann's bowling. David Hussey top-scored with 59 off 54 balls to rebuild the innings, with useful support from Cameron White (30) and an unbeaten cameo from his brother Michael Hussey (17 not out) at the death. Ryan Sidebottom was England's most economical bowler, finishing with 2 for 26. England's chase lost opener Michael Lumb cheaply, caught off Dirk Nannes' bowling for just 2, but the match turned decisively from there. Craig Kieswetter and Kevin Pietersen came together and put on 111 runs for the second wicket -- comfortably the match-defining partnership of the final. Kieswetter finished unbeaten on 63 off 49 balls, striking seven fours and two sixes for his maiden Twenty20 international half-century, while Pietersen made 47 off 31 before falling to a catch by Warner off the bowling of Steve Smith. Collingwood and Eoin Morgan saw the chase home with three overs to spare, sparking wild celebrations among England's travelling support. The win carried outsized significance for English cricket. It was the country's first global trophy in any format after a long history of near-misses and outright failures on the biggest stages -- runners-up finishes in the 1979, 1987 and 1992 Cricket World Cup finals, and a beaten finalist at the 2004 Champions Trophy, among other frustrations. Kieswetter's player-of-the-match innings, in just his own emergence as an England international, was a breakout moment for a player who had qualified to play for England via residency rules after growing up in South Africa. For Australia, runners-up for the first time in the format's young history, the defeat was a rare reminder that white-ball dominance in other formats did not automatically translate to T20 success -- a theme that would recur through much of the format's subsequent history until Australia's own eventual T20 World Cup breakthrough more than a decade later.

Sources

• Wikipedia: 2010 World Twenty20 final
• Wikipedia: 2010 ICC World Twenty20