Between India vs Bangladesh 2nd T20I International, Rajkot made Indians happy as the men in blue leveled the ongoing T20I series against Bangladesh 1-1. India won the match by eight wickets with 26 balls to spare.
With this India created a new world record by surpassing  Australia’s record of 40 victories while chasing in the shortest format of the game.
Bangladesh’ good start interrupted by Indian spinners
The game started with India winning the toss and deciding to bowl first. Bangladesh, sent in to bat enjoyed a healthy Powerplay as they reached 54 without any loss of wicket.
But it was not just the credit of the Bangladesh openers, the Indian bowling department had their share of contribution too.
Rohit Sharma did trust Khaleel Ahmed once again but he conceded three successive fours off his first three balls. Finally, the breakthrough came and Liton Das was run-out by Rishabh Pant.
By the time he already got a life when he was trapped yards down the pitch by a Yuzvendra Chahal leg-break.
Pant gathered the ball and stumped him, but third umpire Anil Chaudhary ruled that he had collected the ball marginally in front of the stumps.
The next two balls were hit for boundaries by Liton Das.
Post Das’ departure regular wickets started to fall. Apart from the openers Das (29) and Mohammad Naim (36) only Soumya Sarkar (30) and Mahmudullah (30) could accumulate double-digit numbers.
Indian spinner Yuzvendra Chahal and Washinton Sundar kept a check on Bangladesh scoring.
From 54/0 Bangladesh were soon 103/4. In the last seven overs had they could only manage to score 49 runs for the cost of four wickets.
Chahal ended with 2/28 and Sundar took one wicket for 25 runs. Bangladesh were eventually wrapped up for just 153/6.
Rohit Sharma leads from the front
Chasing the run was not a huge task for Indians. All they needed was a good start and Indian openers were on it. Rohit Sharma was playing his 100th T20I match and the captain led from the front.
After the defeat in Delhi, for Sharma this game was important as a player and skipper. He registered his 18th half-century and scored 85 off just 43 balls and along with Dhawan (31) developed a key partnership.
Dhawan was gone in the 11th over followed Sharma in the 13th. Thankfully, India cruised to 113/0 by halfway stage. When Rohit Sharma was dismissed Indian were on 125/2 in 12.2 overs. The job was almost done. Finally, Shreyas Iyer (24* off 13) and KL Rahul (8* off 11) took India home to level the series.
Rohit’s 85-run knock in Rajkot is the highest individual score while chasing in a T20I by an Indian captain. Earlier it was Virat Kohli’s 82 during the 2017 Colombo T20I against Sri Lanka.
Rohit Sharma became only the second player to feature in 100 International matches in Men’s T20I cricket. Shoaib Malik leads the list with 119 appearances in this format.
For India, only Rohit and Harmanpreet Kaur (100) have so far featured in over 100 T20Is across Men’s and Women’s cricket. In the first 10 overs of Indian innings; Sharma scored the most runs (79) by any player in a T20I innings for India by end of 10th over.
He hit a total of six maximums and six boundaries during his innings. His total tally is currently 37 sixes in only 17 T20I innings while leading the team.
Thus he hit the most number of T20I sixes by an Indian skipper surpassing MS Dhoni’s 34 maximums.
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