India on Sunday pulled off a sensational win against Bangladesh in the T20 tri-series held in Sri Lanka. India needed five runs of the last ball and Dinesh Karthik smashed a remarkable six over cover off Soumya Sarkar’s bowling.
India needed five runs to win in the last two deliveries but V Shankar threw his wicket away off Sarkar’s bowling when his strike to long on was superbly caught by Mahedi Hasan.
Earlier batting first, Bangladesh had put up a decent total of 166 for the loss of eight wickets in 20 overs. Sabbir Rahman was their pick of the batsman as he smashed a quick 77 runs off just 50 balls. Bangladesh had defeated the hosts Sri Lanka to secure the spot in the final against India. That match was marred by ugly scenes on the pitch. Incidentally, Bangladesh too had defeated Sri Lanka in their last match by scoring the winning run with a magnificent six.
Batting second, India could not take advantage and kept losing wickets at a regular interval. Skipper Rohit Sharma was the only batsman, who could cross fifty mark (56 runs off 42 balls).
After winning the tri-series, Rohit said, “Brilliant game, brilliant for the crowd who have come out in numbers. The support we got here from this crowd was brilliant, it would be a bit different if we were playing Sri Lanka but I would like to thank them for their show tonight. Great tournament for us. Young lads.
“A lot of work has been done of the field in terms of strategy so it was very easy for me to remind them what we spoke of in our meeting and I thought they just executed them perfectly, in the powerplay, middle overs and the death. Some of them went for runs, but they will learn from it and today was a real platform to show what we could do. Very happy to see Dinesh doing what he did. he didn’t get much game time until now, but he showed his power. We held him back because of his finishing ability and his experience. And it paid off.”
Bangladeshi skipper Shakib-al-Hasan said, “You can’t ask for more in a final like this. I thought we played superbly, anybody could have won the game, but India held their nerves well. We wanted ot bowl our best bowler in the 18th and 19th. But even if Rubel had gone for 15 an over, we could have handled it.
“He didn’t miss his length too much but credit to Dinesh Karthik to just come out and hit sixes from his first ball. We knew 166 would be tough to defend, we had a good feeling though, everyone did their best, gave their 100%. It hurts to lose, but we played well. It was pre-planned to give Mehedi one over, who we wanted to bowl, but all of our bowlers can bowl. We can still take lots of positives from here and someday we can be on the winning side.”
(With inputs from BCCI.TV)