Indian team’s dominance over Sri Lanka continued as they won the only T20 match comfortable by 39 runs, says a report in The Hindu.
Sri Lanka needed to chase 156 runs to win the match but they could only manage 116 runs before getting all out in the 18th over.
India batted first and lost Gambhir early, but then Virat Kohli (68), and Ajinkya Rahane (21) added 74 for the second wicket.
Sri Lanka in reply, got off to a disastrous start and lost their opener Dilshan early. Irfan Pathan took three early wickets to halt the home team’s run chase.
Indian captain MS Dhoni credited his bowlers for the win against Sri Lanka. Ashok Dinda in the match took four wickets and Irfan Pathan took three.
Dhoni said, “Overall, we were really good. It was a good performance. We thought of a high scoring game but it was slightly different as the ball was swinging till the 20th over."
Dhoni also said that hitting the ball in the death overs was not easy as the ball was swinging and was not really easy to slog. "We thought we were 10-15 runs short. Especially the way Sri Lankan team started, we thought that may be the case but our bowlers came back beautifully”, said Dhoni.
On the part-timers who did a wonderful job he said, "The combination of Virat and Rohit was a big plus point for us. If you are looking to play with four specialist bowlers and a part-timer, they bowled well as a unit. If in four overs, they concede 30-35 runs, it's ok with us. Our strength is having that seventh batsman in the side. Quite happy with the performance”, he added.
Meanwhile, The Times of India report says that for Virat Kohli will be in the Test match arena. Virat is ranked number two batsmen in the world and Kohli will definitely be in the Test team as the last Test match that he played, he scored a hundred.
