It was 30 needed off 30 balls again and
India still pulled it off and like at the T20 World Cup final a month ago,
Suryakumar Yadav was one of their heroes again. Only this time he did it as captain – and bowler of the 20th over, where he defended five runs by picking up two wickets.
Sri Lanka’s batting has been extremely brittle in this T20I series. They collapsed three times in three games – 9 for 30, then 7 for 31 and finally 7 for 27. Tuesday’s debacle would hurt particularly badly because they lost two wickets to
Rinku Singh in the 19th over. He had only ever bowled 60 deliveries in his entire T20 career, which began way back in 2014. And two more wickets fell with the captain taking the ball. He’d only bowled twice in the last five years across first-class, List A and T20 cricket.
Suryakumar’s inventiveness as captain – trusting two brand new bowlers to bowl the last two overs – pushed the game into a Super Over, where he hit the winning runs. At the presentation, he said he fully believed the win was possible even though India had only 137 on the board.
“More than the last over, I feel when we were around 30 for 4 and 48 for 5, how the boys showed character in the middle and took the game away from them, I felt 140 was par score on that track and the way they batted. When we were going in during our fielding sessions, I told them I had seen such kinds of games. I think if we put our heart in for one, one-and-a-half hours we can pull it off.”
All three games offered spin-friendly conditions which Suryakumar might have factored into his calculations because him bowling the 20th over was far from the plan.
“It was fun,”
Riyan Parag said, “And that’s why actually we didn’t feel the nerves. We planned it in such a fun way, it was very spontaneous, Rinku
bhai bowling the 19th over. I was pretty sure Siraj
bhai was going to bowl the last over but then Surya bhai just came on to bowl and got it to a Super Over. So I think everyone was pretty chill. We were having fun. That’s one of our motto as well. We are being ruthless but we have fun and enjoy the game and that’s why we were able to pull this off today.”
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