The Cricket match was held in Colombo, Sri Lanka in R Premadasa Stadium today. SL won the toss and opted to bowl first. It was a tough going pitch and the ball was not coming nicely on the bat. Shikhar Dhawan the Indian captain played very well scored 40 runs in 42 balls. Devdutt Padikkal scored 29 runs in 23 balls with two boundaries, while Ruturaj Gaikwad scored 21 runs in 18 balls. The rest of them didn’t even make up to more runs. This shows that Sri Lanka bowled exceptionally today to team India. Earlier, India started off nicely with the blade, but once the opening stand fell, they could not really bounce back. Their run-scoring was at a slower rate and the inexperienced batting line-up kept losing wickets and ended on 132. It was a brilliant day for the Lankans with the ball, their spinners rode the challenge and restricted the total.
In the second innings, SL didn’t put its best foot forward, Avishka Fernando lost his wicket in the third over. India bowled very well, for a side, that had too much imbalance, but couldn’t do enough to win the game. Sadeera Samarawickrama and Minod Bhanuka started looking comfortable, but the former did not last long. Though Bhanuka kept his bails secured, his partners kept losing their wickets regularly. Eventually Bhanuka also lost his wicket and with that the momentum shifted to India’s way.
Wanindu Hasaranga and Dhananjaya de Silva scored a few boundaries and pulled the game their way again. When Hasaranga and Mendis lost their wickets, it seemed that India would romp home, but de Silva and Karunaratne played until the last over and took their team over the line. De Silva scored 40 runs in 34 balls, Bhanuka scored 36 runs in 31 balls and Hasaranga scored 15 runs. Star player Bhuvneshwar Kumar was not able to show his magic today. In this game he took only 1 wicket, Kuldeep Yadav took 2 wickets and Varun Chakravarthy took 1 wicket.
India:- 132/5 in 20 overs
Sri Lanka:- 133/6 in 19.4 overs
The match got critical in the last few overs but Sri Lanka performed and added feathers to its cap. They have successfully leveled the series and now, the final play of the 3-game T20 Cricket series will be the decider. Towards the end, it looked like India would do enough to close the game but the hosts held on and won this game by 4 wickets!
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