New Delhi, Aug 11 (IANS) Former India fielding coach T Dilip has identified the aftermath of India’s 2024 T20 World Cup triumph in Barbados as the defining memory of his nearly five-year stint with the national team, saying the emotions inside the dressing room captured the weight of the journey that had preceded the title.

Dilip, whose tenure with the Indian side came to an end following the recent tour of England, looked beyond the trophy itself when reflecting on the high point of his time with the team. For him, it was the few moments immediately after India secured the title that best reflected what the players had endured and accomplished.

“If I go back to my best moment, I think Barbados 2024, not just the trophy, but the dressing room atmosphere afterwards, the silence for a few seconds before it broke. I think in that silence, I could sense the amount of hard work the boys had put in over those four years. And I’ll always keep that frame in my mind,” Dilip told JioStar.

That final in Bridgetown also produced one of the most memorable fielding moments of India's campaign, with Suryakumar Yadav completing a stunning catch on the boundary to dismiss David Miller in the closing stages.

Dilip revealed that even amid the celebration, his immediate reaction was one of calculation rather than emotion as he tried to establish whether the catch had been completed legally.

“For the first few seconds, I was silent and calm physically because my mind was doing all the calculations, whether Surya had taken that ball cleanly, whether his feet were inside the boundary rope, whether he had popped the ball out in time. So, my mind was doing all the calculations. But once it was confirmed that it was a clean catch, there was a surge of emotions. But in the back of my mind, I also knew that the match had yet to be completed. But that was an extraordinary catch by Surya in the context of the game,” he said of the former T20I captain’s effort.

--IANS

vi/