T20 was young and naïve in 2007, yet to find its voice, its credibility or its wealthiest benefactors.

Sir Allen Stanford, that benevolent Texan billionaire, had launched a new domestic competition in the Caribbean a year earlier, but it wasn’t until June 2008 that he landed his (rented-for-the-day) helicopter containing $20m dollars (of largely fake bank notes) on the Lord’s Nursery Ground and the ECB made their deal with the devil.

India were still to fall for T20’s charms and in 2006 the BCCI had voted against the introduction of a world tournament, fearing the impact it would have on the existing formats. “We were outvoted 10-1 at the ICC meeting,” explained BCCI secretary Niranjan Shah, “so we had no other option but to embrace this format of the game.”

India’s lukewarm attitude was reflected by the fact that prior to the 2007 World T20 they’d only played a single match in the format, and when their squad was announced it didn’t include their two biggest stars, Sourav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar. In Ganguly’s absence, the side would be led for the first time by the buccaneering keeper/batsman, MS Dhoni. “We will return with the World Cup,” the 26-year-old told India’s selectors following his appointment.

Meanwhile in England, the first professional T20 tournament had just completed its fourth season. Introduced in 2003 after what Stuart Robertson, the ECB’s marketing manager, described as “the biggest piece of consumer research the game had ever done”, the Twenty20 Cup had provoked fierce debate between the traditionalists and the modernists. Was this new competition destroying the fabric of the county game? Or future-proofing it in the face of an increasingly competitive market? The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The ECB’s proposal for a domestic T20 tournament had only snuck through by 11 votes to 7 but by the time the 2007 World T20 in South Africa rolled around it had won over many of its doubters. County attendances had soared, profits were rising and the national team were now playing the format on a semi-regular basis, thumping Australia by 100 runs in their first-ever T20I in 2005 (Geraint Jones opening the batting, Andrew Strauss performing the ‘finisher’ role at No.7) and playing five more matches ahead of the World T20.

England’s strategy until that point had been to more or less stick with the ODI side and mess around with the batting order, a bit like a Sunday club friendly. But the selectors had a change of approach ahead of T20’s first global tournament, recognising short-format specialists who’d excelled in the Twenty20 Cup.

Luke Wright, Sussex’s 22-year-old all-rounder, was parachuted into the squad, and there were recalls for three players who thought their chance with England had long since past. Jeremy Snape, Leicestershire’s 34-year-old off-spinner and creator of the ‘moon ball’, was back after five years in the international wildness, and there was also a return for Warwickshire opener Darren Maddy, 33, who hadn’t featured for England since 2000. But the most stirring comeback story was that of Chris Schofield.

In the summer of 2000, Schofield – then a 21-year-old leggie with just 22 first-class appearances to his name – had been fast-tracked into England’s Test side to take on Zimbabwe. He didn’t bowl a ball on debut at Lord’s, returned 0-73 at Trent Bridge, and that was that. Four years later, after losing his contract at Lancashire, he was turning his arm over for Suffolk.

“My career had gone downhill,” Schofield tells Wisden.com. “I was thinking I wasn’t going to play cricket again when I left Lancashire. I was in a little bit of a bad place, I wasn’t really enjoying my cricket. But then I felt like I still had something to give. I just wanted an opportunity to prove to myself and other people that I was capable of getting back to the top.”

“The next T20 World Cup was two years later in England,” says Maddy, “and I thought hopefully I’d have another chance, but it was a strange feeling. I’d had these two-and-a-half weeks back with the England team and you’re in this bubble and it’s a wonderful lifestyle – touring again, being with your mates, playing cricket – and then it’s over.

“I remember getting the plane home to the UK. The final was being played that day between India and Pakistan, so I didn’t even see it. It was a very surreal feeling being part of this bubble and then all of a sudden this emptiness of being on the plane on the way home, realising that it was all over.”

Despite the positive impression they made in South Africa, neither Maddy nor Schofield played for England again. A broken thumb and an ACL injury restricted Maddy to just one T20 appearance over the next two years, ending any hopes he had of playing in the 2009 World T20 on home soil, while Schofield broke each of his thumbs in two separate incidents during the 2008 summer and subsequently slipped down the pecking order.

The 2007 World T20 marked the start of the format’s rapid expansion, the inaugural Indian Premier League following hot on the heels of India’s dramatic last-gasp win over Pakistan at The Wanderers, Dhoni delivering the trophy just as he said he would. For Maddy and Schofield, two bit-part characters in T20’s first global jamboree, it was a final chapter that neither had dreamt of.