By: Drcricket7 Staff
India’s miraculous jump to No. 1 T20 team in the world isn’t a flash in the pan. It’s a combination of persistent hard work, spectacular team effort and enormous self-belief that saw India winning all their T20 games in Australia.
Friday was one such occasion when India yet again showed why they are the best in the business. Playing on home turf of captain MS Dhoni in Ranchi, India went berserk with their all-round skills to crush Sri Lanka to a 69-run defeat.
India were right on the money from the word go. Opener Shikhar Dhawan lived up to his team management’s faith with a resounding 51 off 25 deliveries to give the initial momentum.
It was a roller coaster ride for India as long as Dhawan was at the crease and treated the inexperienced Sri Lankan attack with utter disdain.
Dhawan partner and the latest run-machine of the team Rohit Sharma too was in his elements to make a cool 43.
Later on, the rest of the middle-order batsmen like Ajinkya Rahane, Suresh Raina and Hardik Pandya also chipped in with some very useful contributions to take the India score four short of 200.
Perhaps, India could have scored a few more runs if Lanka’s Thisara Perera hattrick wouldn’t have happened towards the fag end of the innings.
In the second essay, the visitors then bowed down in front of the consistent Indian bowling department, which has become quite a force in the shortest version of the game.
Starting from R Ashwin, Ashish Nehra, Ravindra Jadeja to Jasprit Bumrah, all of them got wickets. Yuvraj Singh may not have missed out on the opportunity to spend some more time in the middle with the bat, but with the ball he did well for India.
He contributed to India’s superb bowling performance that restricted Sri Lank to a score of 127 for nine in 20 stipulated over.
With the series now locked at 1-1, India would now be looking to wrap up the three-match series with a bang on Sunday.
They are, after all, playing their best cricket and there is no reason to believe that a win in this bilateral series is impossible. Like the Pune game during the series opener, something really has to go wrong for India to lose it from here on.
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