India sees a Start Of New Rahul Dravid-Rohit Sharma Era With Five-Wicket Win Over New Zealand – 1st T20I
India won the first match against New Zealand in T20I on Wednesday flawlessly by 5 wickets. Martin Guptil (70 off 42) and Mark Chapman (63 off 50) of New Zealand made a good target of 164 on a good batting surface. India’s chase began with Rohit (48 off 36) making a good captaincy debut along with Suryakumar Yadav (62 off 40) who came in place of Virat Kohli at number 3.
India was seeing a comfortable win since the beginning but they messed up in the final four overs to reach the target. Around the end, New Zealand was also out of bowling techniques but part-time pacer Daryl Mitchell saved the day. Venkatesh Iyer debuting in international cricket made a 4 and then Rishabh Pant got the winning runs.
This game marks a new beginning for team India with Rohit as a T20I captain and Rahul Dravid as head coach. Both the teams had some of their fundamental players on break this time as a part of their workload management; it was a first for some of the new players. India raced to 50 runs to no loss in the first 5 overs.
Rohit played some amazing shots with back-to-back fours off Tim Southee in the 3rd over. The popular duo of Southee and Trent Boult were under pressure after this. KL Rahul made a six and was playing well after Mitchell Santer’s played his game and he was out on 15 runs and 14 balls.
Suryakumar made one of the most memorable shots of his innings and that was a pick-up stroke off Lockie Ferguson. It looked like both Rohit and Suryakumar would finish the game but that didn’t happen.
In the last few overs, the chase was 23 runs off 24 balls. India battled to make 10 runs in the last over. Overall the match turned out to be well on India’s side and New Zealand as always gave a tough competition.
New Zealand beat India in T20 World Cup and reached the semi-finals facing England. New Zealand’s win over Afghanistan diminished all chances of India reaching the T20 World Cup 2021.
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