Sri Lanka levels up with India with a win in the ongoing T20 series
Sri Lanka defeated India in the second match of the ongoing T20 series, leveling the loss suffered in the first match. On Wednesday, Sri Lanka managed to save itself from a one-sided victory of the visitors and took on India full throttle.
India started off slow and only managed 132 runs on the scoreboard giving an immense opportunity to the Sri Lankan side to level things up. The Indian skipper was the top run-scorer with his 40-run knock.
Sri Lankans gave it their all to this but a lacking batting space in the Indian side only made things easier for them. India had no choice but to go ahead with four debutants and only five batsmen for the second game, which built up a lot of pressure on the skipper. Dhawan tried his best but the visitors gave in to the pressure and lost the match by four wickets.
Even though it was a low-scoring match, Sri Lankans found their share of thrillers when they had to score 20 runs in the last two overs. Bhuvneshwar Kumar was handed the ball in the second last over but his full toss seemed to fail against Chamika Karunaratne who hit a six to his Kumar’s delivery.
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The chase was led by Dhananjay de Silva, who failed to score a half-century but remained not out by the end of the match. He was rightly saved at rough edges by Minor Bhatuna who also helped anchor the victory. Bhatuna scored 36 which was enough when considered with a partnership to register a victory in a low-scoring game.
There were nine players in total who were missing because of being in isolation from the team including Krunal Pandya who recently tested positive for coronavirus. The team now had new faces such as Devdutt Padikkal, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Nitish Rana, and Chetan Sakariya.
Experts believe that for the low score, the Indian bowlers managed to do a decent job trying to restrict the Sri Lankan batsmen. Kuldeep Yadav secured two wickets for India. Even mystery spinner, Varun Chakraborty did a good job with the ball and Rahul Chahar too managed the wicket of in-form Avishka Fernando to give a tough fight to Sri Lankan side.