Despite some apprehension and then further suspense as
Mohammed Naim strengthened Bangladesh’s dominance over the game, the Indian
team bowlers led by the spectacular Deepak Chahar ensured that the home side
evaded an upset and surged their way towards a series victory after being down
with a defeat in the very first game in Delhi. This time too, though the performance wasn’t entirely convincing from India’s side, they still did a pretty
good job to recover their touch back with the bowlers in the final phase of the
innings. Here, we sum up the game in a short overview of sorts going ahead in
the article:
Match Overview:
First Innings:
Rohit Sharma was bowled over by Shaiful Islam and Shikhar
Dhawan failed to capitalize on racking up a big score after a decent enough
start as well. But, it provided an excellent opportunity to the duo of KL Rahul
and Shreyas Iyer to display their mettle on the field and so they did with
rollicking half-centuries and thus providing an excellent core to India’s
eventual total at the end of 20 overs. Rahul led the proceedings initially,
using his incredible stroke-play to immense effect as he relied on the
imperious timing with the willow to ensure that his side recovered from the
early blow of two wickets.
Shreyas Iyer took some time and assessed the nature of the
wicket before unveiling the big shots to shoot up the scoring rate by a fair
margin. His fantastic, free-flowing range of shots meant that the innings
didn’t really take a dip as such after Rahul’s dismissal. In an over, Iyer even
smacked Atif Hossain for three consecutive sixes and milked 20 runs out of his
over. Rishabh Pant failed to make the most out of this opportunity again as
Manish Pandey scored 22 runs off 13 deliveries and despite a rather subdued
conclusion, his short innings at least presented the Indian team a formidably
defendable total despite the two openers being unable to stay on the crease for
long.
Second Innings:
Deepak Chahar was the Hero of the show in Nagpur. Image: BCCI
The Bangladeshi innings was put to a halt by a double-wicket
strike by Deepak Chahar in the early part of the innings. However, Chahar was
later kept on hold to bowl the crucial overs in the final five of the innings
as his death bowling skills are relatively more reliable than Khaleel Ahmed.
Naim raced towards his 81 runs with a plethora of boundaries as he
counter-attacked Yuzvendra Chahal and pushed the Indian side backward after a
dominant phase of play where runs flew aplenty and with minimum fuss for the
visitors.
Whilst Mohammad Mithun too, ground it hard to recover his
touch, a victory looked in sight with merely eight overs remaining in the game.
However, Deepak returned to notch a dismissal and then Shivam Dube’s strikes
with the ball meant that Bangladesh lost their seasoned pro in Mushfiqur Rahim
to a duck. The batting furthermore from there lacked the conviction to steer
the chase and the Indian bowlers kept mounting on the pressure, squeezing the
flow of runs and eventually bowling out Mahmadullah’s side with the senior
Chahar attaining a hat-trick in the process.
Best Of The Match:
Player of the Match:
Shreyas Iyer was in some incredible form in the first
innings, but it was Deepak Chahar who deserves to take this spot from tonight’s
match. The pacer does not have a whole lot of international exposure and
experience at his back, but he still managed to keep a calm head, back his
skills to the utmost and eventually find a way to scalp wickets even when other
bowlers terribly struggled to do so. Deepak had quite a few variations up his sleeve,
and that meant that he knew how to block the flow of runs and also pave out a
way for a dismissal some way or the other. In the absence of other experienced
pacers like Jasprit Bumrah and Bhuvneshwar Kumar, it was Chahar who gladly
encapsulated the responsibility of assuming the role of leading the pace attack
and did so with complete perfection during the course of the second innings.
Stat of the Match:
Deepak Chahar’s bowling figures of 3.2-0-7-6 is by far the
best ever in the history of T20 internationals. The previous record was held by
former Sri Lankan spinner Ajanta Mendis. Also, Chahar became the first Indian
bowler in this process to claim a hat-trick in T20Is. In his first over of the
spell as well, he was on a hat-trick delivery and so was Shivam Dube later on
in the innings. Overall, it was a laudable bowling performance by the
27-year-old.
What’s next for Team India?
Both India and Bangladesh would face each other in a
two-match Test series with the first of them starting from the 14th
of November at the Holkar Stadium in Indore. Virat Kohli and Mominul Haque
would lead both sides respectively.