The hosts India thrashed the visitors Sri Lanka in the Pune T20I on Friday (10th January) night, and finally, won the three-match T20I series by the 2-0 margin.
After the visiting captain Lasith Malinga won the toss, he decided to bowl first. The hosts managed to score 201/6 while Sri Lanka were bundled out for just 123 runs. The home side won this match by 78 runs.
Sri Lankan batsmen failed against the hosts bowlers
Sri Lankan batting totally failed to handle the Indian bowlers. Apart from Angelo Mathews and Dhananjaya de Silva, all other visiting batsmen failed to reach the double-digit scores in that big chasing.
Returning to the T20 cricket after around 16 months, Angelo Mathews scored 31 runs off 20 balls. On the other hand, Dhananjaya de Silva hit a brilliant half-century and scored 57 runs off 36 balls.
Among the Indian bowlers, Navdeep Saini (3/28) took three wickets while Shardul Thakur (2/19) and Washington Sundar (2/37) scalped two wickets each.
Despite some difficulties, India’s beginning and starts were very good in their innings
Indian openers KL Rahul and Shikhar Dhawan provided the very good start as they had the opening partnership of 97 runs. After Dhawan was dismissed on 52 runs off 36 balls, India lost three other quick wickets, including Sanju Samson (6), KL Rahul (54 off 36 balls) and Shreyas Iyer (4).
While India lost their first four wickets in just 25 runs, Manish Pandey and the captain Virat Kohli put the crucial 42 runs partnership for the fifth wicket. While Kohli was dismissed on 26 off 17 balls, Washington Sundar lost his wicket on a golden duck.
Shardul Thakur once again impressed with his firing cameo knock of 22 not out off just eight balls. Also, Manish Pandey played the unbeaten knock of 31 runs off 18 balls.
Lakshan Sandakan (3/35) took three wickets while Lahiru Kumara (1/46) and Wanindu Hasaranga (1/27) picked up one wicket each.
While the first game of this series had no result, India won the second match of this three-match series by seven wickets. By winning this final game of this series, the home team has won it by 2-0.
Some crucial match stats:
i) Sanju Samson is the new record holder of missing the most number of consecutive T20Is for India. Before this match, he missed out in the last 73 T20Is for India, which is also the joint-third record in overall T20I history of this list. Umesh Yadav was the previous record holder for India who missed 65 consecutive T20Is for India before getting a chance.
ii) Virat Kohli is the fastest captain to complete 11,000 international runs. While he reached this milestone in just 196 international innings, he broke the previous record of Ricky Ponting who reached this milestone as a captain in 252 international innings.
iii) Virat Kohli became the second Indian (after MS Dhoni) and sixth overall batsman to score 11,000+ international runs as a captain.
iv) The right-arm pacer Jasprit Bumrah has taken 53 T20I wickets. It is the new record of most T20I wickets by an Indian bowler. Ravichandran Ashwin and Yuzvendra Chahal both are jointly in the next position as they have scalped 52 T20I wickets each.
