Team India clinched a 1-0 lead in the three-match T20I series against Sri Lanka after they defeated the visitors by a huge margin of 93 runs in the series opener in Cuttack. The win, the result of a clinical all-round performance by the team, resulted in being India’s biggest win T20Is and Sri Lanka’s biggest defeat in the format.
Team India posted 180-3 after being asked to bat first, with useful contributions from every batsman who got a hit in the middle. KL Rahul, back in the India Blues after being dropped from the one-day side, top-scored with an impressive 61. The batsman from Karnataka, who was as important member of the Indian team in all formats not too long ago, seems to have fallen out of favour in the context of the 50-over format.
While providing for lack of clarity in his role and batting position as factors for his failure, Rahul hadn’t quite justified his place in the team in the seven T20Is he had played earlier in the year; a top score of 17 in six innings and a strike-rate of 72.2 didn’t do justice to a batsman of his talent.
And hence, it was refreshing to see him go about doing his job, the way he has done over the years – at the international level and in domestic cricket. He collected runs playing copybook strokes and playing conventional cricket – much like Virat Kohli does.
The bulk of his 61 runs on Wednesday came through playing drives on both sides of the wicket, working the ball off the pads and running briskly between the wickets.
Rahul isn’t made to pummel the ball; he doesn’t need to. When classy, silken drives and elegant flicks can do the job, one wonders why on those rare occasions he attempts to play those kind of strokes which bring about his downfall.
Remember his dismissal in the Pune Test against Australia earlier this year? At Cuttack on Wednesday too, he attempted to play an ungainly heave across the line, losing his stumps in the process. That is one area Rahul needs to work on – to refrain from playing those ugly forceful strokes and ride through those periods, when he feels the urge to break the shackles.
There were several other impressive performances in India’s win – the spinners lead the list. While Sri Lanka opted to chase, possibly influenced by the excessive dew late in the night, that actually didn’t seem to matter to the Indian bowlers.
It’s not that Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav were not affected by the dew, but rather since they worked hard on drying the ball, were able to grip the ball and landed the ball in the areas they wanted. While the Sri Lankan bowlers struggled for control – bowling wides, wayward deliveries and full tosses – Chahal and Yadav were able to land the ball and as a result tasted success.
For the pair, who have pretty quickly established themselves as India’s first-choice spinners in the limited-overs format, to pick up 6 wickets on a dewy night speaks volumes about their ability.
Leg-spin by itself is a difficult art to practice; to be able to bowl with a wet ball makes bowling leg-spin an arduous task. To come out with such match-defining performances after battling the elements will certainly boost Chahal and Yadav’s confidence and make them better bowlers.
On a night when the cricket ball ended up feeling like a slippery bar of soap, Chahal emerged as the wrecker-in-chief. The leg-spinner from Haryana picked up a wicket in each of the four overs he bowled and blew the sails off the visitor’s run-chase.
He returned with figures of 4-23, which earned him the Man of the Match award. In the process, Chahal also became the highest wicket-taker in T20Is in 2017.
In his brief journey in international cricket, Chahal has become every Indian captain’s go-to bowler for wickets. After 13 T20Is, the leg-spinner has 22 wickets – which is the most any Indian bowler has taken in his first 13 T20Is. In ODIs, Chahal has an impressive tally of 27 wickets from 17 matches.
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