The Indian batsmen faltered at last in the T20 series against Australia as the home team's spinners finally got around to have the better of Hardik Pandya and Virat Kohli, at crucial moments, to give their team a consolation victory in the last match. Even after this 12-run loss at the Sydney Cricket Ground, India ended up winning the series 2-1 and can now move on to the Test matches.
While Mitchell Swepson got the Man of the Match award for his impressive 3/23 in four overs, Hardik Pandya was adjudged Man of the Series for his impact on the entire set of matches. Swepson got the important wickets of Shikhar Dhawan, Sanju Samson, and Shreyas Iyer.
The Indian captain Virat Kohli was happy getting back at the Aussies with a series win after a drubbing in the ODIs. Speaking at the post-match presentation ceremony, Kohli lauded his players saying that the same competitive spirit needs to be carried to the Tests as well.
“The series win is a little asterisk for us to finish the 2020 season on a high,” he said. “We need to take the same competitive attitude into the Tests, and having played here a few times, we can score runs as well. Once it's time to capitalize and score, we need to do that session by session,” Kohli said in the interview.
The skipper was also confident that the current side is stronger than the last one.
Talking about today’s chase, Kohli said, “At one stage, when Hardik started going, we thought we could pull it off. The middle over phase during our batting cost us the game. A partnership of 30-odd would've made it easier for Hardik.”
Kohli,32, thinks that the team is managing to find ways to come back and give the opposition a scare every time. He also praised the strong Sydney crowd.
“I feel the crowd was a factor as well. It's always giving you a dimension of motivation. Our crowd pulls us through sometimes, and Australia's too, and we as players feed off the crowd's energy,” he concluded.
The Aussie captain Aaron Finch continued being on the winning side in Sydney as, after the two ODIs, he won a T20I too in Sydney. (He did not play the previous game).
“It was a great series, and we just happened to be on the wrong end of the first two,” Finch said in the post-match presentation.
Lauding the two spinners, who gave away just 44 runs in seven overs, at a time when the chasing team needed to go above nine runs per over, Finch remarked, “It's the first time we've had two leg-spinners in the side, and they were bold with the short boundaries here. So, credit to both of them.
“Swepson bowled the 7th over against Shikhar and Virat, both destructive in their own ways, but Zamps bowled really well as well,” he added.
Summing up the entire season post the 2019 World Cup, Finch concluded, “We played some great white-ball cricket over the last 18 months and (I am) really proud of the bunch.”
While the match was in focus, umpiring decisions were scrutinized thoroughly, especially the wides in the second winnings, as well as the DRS of Matthew Wade. However, it were the dropped catches that got ample treatment on Twitter.
Gaurav Kalra had the best of the comments on dropped catches, saying that it was apt that the series ended with a dropped catch as that had been the distinctive feature of the matches.
Cricket journalist Vimal Kumar pointed out how the loss ended Team India's winning streak in the T20Is after 10 games.
Boria Majumdar, a cricket expert and commentator, raised an important point saying that Sanju Samson has finally got a full three-game run and failed immensely, meaning that he wouldn't be getting many chances in the future.
Freddy Wilde, a cricket analyst from England, was also talking serious business and it related to Australia's chances at the 20221 World Cup. He raised the point of how the Australian middle-order needed help while the opening slot has too many contenders.
Aakash Chopra the cricketer turned analyst discussed the decision involving Matthew Wade and how it was fair of the umpires to term the DRS null and void.
And as has been the tradition, we end the segment with a Gaurav Kalra pun, and of course, the Indian team didn't do what he predicted.
With 1-1 in the limited-overs, the bandwagon now moves to the best of the game format- the Tests, with the first one, a day/night affair beginning at Adelaide Oval. How would the teams fare in that, would be exciting to watch.
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