India had won the toss and Captain MS Dhoni*† chose to bowl first. Zimbabwe team scored 170 runs in 20 overs with the loss of six wickets. E Chigumbura scored 54 runs off 26 balls with seven sixes and a four. India tour of Zimbabwe 2016 Highlights Today, 1st T20I: Zim v Ind at Harare, Sunday, June 18, 2016. The fight gets tighter as it gets shorter. Despite being outmatched in all three One-Day Internationals.
Zimbabwe managed to win their second straight Twenty-Over match against India by a margin of only two runs, taking the lead 1-0 in the Twenty20 International series. Like so many other times in his career, it came down to MS Dhoni and what he could do with the final ball. Neville Madziva delivered a sluggish, wide delivery when India needed four.
Dhoni missed the deep point with a slap, but he was unable to provide enough force to beat the defender despite leaping across to get it. Just a few yards to his right, he restricted the captain of India to a single. Madziva had made a vital last-over intervention in just his sixth Twenty20 international. He had struck 6, 2, 4, 6 off Nasir Hossain at Mirpur last November, when Zimbabwe needed to overcome Bangladesh with 18 off five balls.
He was now defending eight from the previous over. When Donald Tiripano’s yorker went awry, India required 14 off seven balls. At far off, Axar Patel got rid of the fielder. Axar hit a similar shot and Madziva bowled a similar delivery, overpitching, on the second ball of the last over. He chose the outfield this time. It dropped to seven off of four as a result. Dhoni failed to beat the fielder at extra cover as Madziva produced a precise wide yorker.
He could have turned down the single at previous occasions. With three balls remaining, he took it and put Rishi Dhawan, one of five T20I rookies in India’s XI, on strike for the first time. Neither Madziva’s wide yorker nor the next wide slower ball could find any way past Dhawan. At this moment, the equation should have read six off one, but Russell Tiffin signaled wide, despite the fact that Dhawan had gone a considerable distance over.
It read five off two instead. Dhawan skillfully hit a single to get Dhoni back on the field, but he was unable to do much with Madziva’s composed slower delivery. Dhoni scored 19 off of 17 balls to finish. Although his strategy may have been dubious, it had reduced his team’s job to 8 off the last over, and most people would have predicted India to win in such scenario.
It was mostly because to one guy, Elton Chigumbura, who hit seven sixes in an undefeated 26-ball 54 and was the main reason Zimbabwe scored 59 off their final five overs, that Zimbabwe set India a goal that seemed so tantalizingly out of reach. Chigumbura were 98 for 4 in 13.1 overs when they reached the crease. Malcolm Waller and Sikandar Raza, who had put up 47 for the third wicket in 34 balls, were the two wickets they had lost in the last four balls.
It was a scene out of the second and third ODIs, when Zimbabwe had gotten to 106 for 3 and 104 for 3, positions of considerable promise, before collapsing dramatically. Both of the contests had seen golden ducks created by Chigumbura. However, this was a fresh day with an alternative structure that would allow him to execute his shots immediately. He had only faced five balls when Yuzvendra Chahal gave him the most leeway imaginable with a no-ball.
With a speed of 115 kph, Chahal delivered a ball with breadth, and Chigumbura, with his head motionless and his base steady, extended his arms to smash it over the long-off boundary. In the 17th over, Chigumbura struck two more sixes off Chahal, and in the 19th over, he struck two off Jaydev Unadkat, seemingly demonstrating that his technique would work just as well against faster bowlers. The first of them struck and bounced off the stadium roof.
Even though Jasprit Bumrah had been the most effective bowler for India, giving up just 10 runs in his first three overs, Chigumbura would not spare him when he returned to throw the last over. He cleared long-off with a low full-toss after taking a large stride back to exploit his crease’s depth, and he then maintained a close watch on a slower ball to mow it high over midwicket to reach his half-century.
It was India’s first official test of the trip against their revamped batting lineup. The pursuit got off to a poor start. In his first-ever ODI, KL Rahul, a bundle of nerves in a low-scoring Test debut, had scored an undefeated hundred. On his T20I debut, he just lasted one ball before cutting Tiripano. At the conclusion of the Powerplay, India lost their second wicket, but not before Ambati Rayudu and another debutant.
Mandeep Singh, had amassed a partnership of 44 runs with eight fours. Without field limits, it was more difficult to hit boundaries, and by the time India lost their fourth wicket in the 13th over (Kedar Jadhav playing on while attempting to slug Taurai Muzarabani), the needed rate had risen to 10 an over. That’s when Dhoni entered the room.
With a combination of strong running (six twos and one wide) and boundary shots (two consecutive Pandey sixes off Graeme Cremer’s legspin) to add 53 in 30 balls, Dhoni and Pandey kept India on track. India needed 28 runs from 16 after Pandey was dismissed in the 18th over for slicing a full, wide ball from Muzarabani further than anticipated. Axar’s hitting reduced the score to eight off the final over. They faced a last-over specialist just when they thought they had won it all.
India in Zimbabwe T20I Series – 1st T20I
T20I no. 558 | 2016 season
Played at Harare Sports Club
18 June 2016 (20-over match)
