The Men in Blue had a torrid start and equally horrible end with the ball, but their middle-order came to the side’s rescue, allowing them to coast home in the T20I series decider against Australia on September 25.
The hosts chased down the tourists’ massive 186/7 off the penultimate ball, with their premier allrounder Hardik Pandya coming up with another death-overs act.
But before he came up with a scratchy but eventually good enough 25 not out off 16 balls in the end, India controlled their run-chase via an excellent partnership between Virat Kohli and Suryakumar Yadav.
The duo came together when India found themselves in deep trouble at 30 for 2 inside the powerplay phase. From there, they owned the stage with their respective half-centuries and helped the side put all the pressure back on Australia.
Kohli started the charge with the intent to get going early into his innings. The great batter reached his fifty in 38 balls, looking in strong rhythm with the bat up until that point. He controlled the chase at his end with a measured knock and played an ideal foil to the more aggressive Suryakumar.
Suryakumar’s knock of 69 off 36 balls and partnership with Kohli, where he played the more dominating of the two batters at the crease, exhibited some high-class strokes against pace and spin both.
The right-hander played shots of rich pedigree in the middle, finishing 5 fours and 5 sixes. It very rarely happens that Kohli plays well but the limelight gets stolen by someone else. Yadav played one such innings in the run-chase in Hyderabad before his dismissal.
The wicket of the Indian No.4 resulted in an unforeseen halt in the proceedings for the hosts, with Kohli unexpectedly losing some of his timing and making only 13 off his last 10 balls in the middle while the asking rate kept piling on. Especially as Pandya had an indifferent start to his own innings, playing and missing multiple of his big-shot attempts against the Aussie seamers.
The in-form allrounder, however, had a timely reversion to mean with his powerhitting capabilities, managing to hit some invaluable boundaries, including a four carved through the deep-third region off Daniel Sams to close out the proceedings.
Up until that boundary, Sams (2/33) had done a very reasonable job of keeping the dangerous Hardik and his partner Dinesh Karthik at bay. The left-arm seamer was Australia’s only positive with the ball in hand, with their veteran pacers Josh Hazlewood (1/40) and Pat Cummins (1/40) proving equally expensive on the night.
Sams also managed a 20-ball 28 to help Australia resurrect their position with the bat in the first half alongside Tim David, whose early rise in international cricket for Australia continued with a blistering 54 off 27 balls.
The Sams-David duo helped Australia smash 63 runs off the last five overs, recovering from trouble at 117/6 at one point. Australia stuttered through the middle-overs despite their stand-in opener Cameron Green hammering the Indian attack to all corners for his 52 off 21 at the top.
India managed to control the middle-overs purely because of the way Axar Patel (3/33) recovered from his iffy start in the field restriction phase and how the left-arm spinner was backed up by Hardik (0/23) and his spin partner Yuzvendra Chahal (1/22). But their death-overs bowling remained a flesh in India’s thorn, an area they will look to resolve in the following series against South Africa.
Brief scores
Australia 186/7 in 20 overs (David 54, Green 52; Patel 3/33) lost to India 187/4 in 19.5 overs (Yadav 69, Kohli 63; Sams 2/33) by 6 wickets
