Who is the first-ever Indian cricketer to play a T20 match?

Team India is one of the powerhouses when it comes to the T20 format. The country is home to the biggest T20 league right now - The Indian Premier League. T20 format is a relatively new format and it is still evolving. For fans of the format, they would have a clear picture of the history of the format. While India has given many popular T20 cricketers, there was one player who participated in the format before many.  In this article, we take a look at the first-ever Indian cricketer to play a T20 match.

No, it is not MS Dhoni or Dinesh Karthik!

If you talk about the beginning of T20 cricket in India, names such as MS Dhoni and Dinesh Karthik come to mind. While MS Dhoni led India to victory in the 2007 T20 World Cup, DK is one player who was part of India's first-ever T20I fixture and is also a part of the squad playing in the 2022 T20 World Cup. However, neither of these two nor anyone in the mainstream is the first player to play a T20 game.

It is a surprising name for the fans

While international T20 games started happening around 2006, it was way back in 2004 that the format was first experimented. The first T20 game happened in England. It was between the County sides. Dinesh Mongia signed up for Lancashire as the replacement for Stuart Law and played a few games for the team in that campaign. Hence, he is the first Indian to play this format because it was only two years later that the other Indian cricketers started playing the format. Dinesh Mongia did not find much success in the format, later on, though. He retired from the game and has gotten himself involved in politics and coaching assignments.