A long tour of the Indian cricket team is going to enter the final stages with test series to start in a few days. We are done with the T20 series where India made a comeback to win the series but could not compete for a whitewash as Australia beat them in the 3rd and last T20 international. Overall, it was a good contest and Australia just managed a 12 runs victory.
Australian batting looks in extreme form nowadays with a lot of aggression, quality, and talent as their batters look to take on bowlers and score big. The third T20 bore an early breakthrough for the team in blue where Washington Sundar got the Aussie skipper with a flatter delivery around off to dismiss him for a duck. After the departure of Finch, Matthew Wade and Steve Smith provided their team with a good partnership where Matthew Wade smashed Indian bowlers all around the park for his 80 off 53 balls. Smith was good for his 24 with the only boundary.
Glenn Maxwell was spectacular yet again who lit the arena with his blitzing batting as he scored 54 off 36 balls. Australia’s overall performance was really good against the Indian bowlers who seemed off-colored one more time. Yuzvendra Chahal and Shardul Thakur conceded 41, and 43 runs respectively; Chahal remained wicketless while Thakur was able to trap Wade in front of his wickets. Washington Sundar was the only bowler to pick 2 wickets for his 34 runs, and Australia finished on a total of 186 for the loss of 5 wickets.
India were shaken at the very start of the match where KL Rahul failed to connect a pull shot and the ball went straight to the deep where Steve Smith took an easy catch. KL Rahul gave his wicket away to Glenn Maxwell and departed on a duck. Shikhar Dhawan scored 28 off 21 balls before Mitchell Swepson got him caught in the deep. All other Indian batsmen did come and go while Virat Kohli fought till the 19th over; scored a brilliant 85 of 61 balls with the help of 4 boundaries and 3 huge ones but unfortunately could not finish the match for his team and a brilliant catch by Daniel Sams faded the hopes of Indian clean sweep. No other batsman could stand in the middle as Sanju Samson went for 10, Shreyas Iyer found himself trapped in front of his wickets to depart without scoring anything. Man of the series Hardik Pandya scored 20 while Washington Sundar shared 7 runs to the team total. India lost consecutive wickets on crucial stages which became the biggest reason for their loss. Sean Abbot turned out to be the easiest bowler to tackle and Indian batters drew 49 runs out of his 4 overs. Glenn Maxwell bowled 3 overs, conceding 20 runs with a wicket. Daniel Sams was another expensive prospect who conceded 29 runs in his 2 over. All other bowlers remained impressive especially Mitchell Swepson who gave only 23 runs for his 4 overs and picked 3 crucial wickets.
It was a good overall performance for both teams, and now everyone is eyeing the test series which does not seem an easy one for India as Virat Kohli will comeback after the 1st match. Let’s see what happens!
