CHENNAI: Pressure lena ka nahi, pressure dena ka. (To not take pressure, but exert it). Lalchand Rajput vividly remembers the tagline.

It was what the Indian team kept telling themselves during the 2007 World T20 in South Africa. The format was new, and so were most players on the team. It was unknown territory for not just the Indian team but for the sport in itself. MS Dhoni was leading the team that was without a head coach and Rajput was the manager of the side.

The young bunch of stars were a new breeze for Indian cricket and they went on to etch their name in the history books, beating Pakistan to win the trophy. “Nobody expected us and nobody knew what was happening,” Rajput recalls.

“So what we did was that, irrespective of what the situation was, we gave them the license to play freely and express themselves. And that’s what brought us the glory. If you look at the team, everybody had contributed: Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Sreesanth, Irfan and Yusuf Pathan, Rohit Sharma, RP Singh, so everybody, Dhoni coming at the end and then getting to that finishing line. The thing which we discussed also was that nobody should take any pressure and we had a tagline. Pressure lena ka nahi, pressure dena ka.”

It worked wonders. India lived by the tagline as they beat Pakistan first in a bowl out and then in the final, records were broken against England. They also outperformed the mighty Australians and fought back from a crisis against South Africa. Not once did they look like they were down and out.

That title win, India’s first since the 1983 World Cup in England, will go down as the moment that changed not just Indian cricket but world cricket.