India, in its second match of the T20 World Cup 2022, faced Netherlands and even knocked them down to register a second win. Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, and Suryakumar Yadav were the show-stoppers in yesterday’s match.
The show – stoppers of the match
The batting performance fell short of expectations. However, three of the top four batters—Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, and Suryakumar Yadav—got divergent fifties before India’s bowlers capably guarded 179 to beat the Netherlands by 56 runs in their second group league match of the T20 World Cup on Thursday and secured every possible point in a tournament that is becoming more unpredictable for various reasons.
The toss was in favor of the Indian Captain Rohit Sharma and he decided to bat first. As the openers came, Rohit Sharma took his form and scored a half-century. Virat Kohli has been performing well in the last few International matches and kept his cool and scored a fifty. Inspired by Rohit and Virat’s knock, Suryakumar Yadav also got his hands on the ball to score another half-century. Overall, the Indian batters managed to put 180 runs on the scoreboard as the target.
The Bowling attack
Every Indian player in the match was a top performer. With the exception of Hardik Pandya, who only bowled one over, each bowler claimed at least one wicket. Before India’s spinners strangled the life out of the Netherlands’ innings as they just managed to cling on to the last wicket.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar, the bowling opener, began off the innings with two maiden overs. India was prepared to put the Netherlands’ batting order to the test with the spin bowling after Arshdeep Singh and Mohammed Shami each bowled one over. While, Kumar delivered two maidens. Max ODowd was struck flush on his pads while attempting to flick Patel’s 97 kph full length delivery on the second ball of his first over. With spin coming from both ends in two more overs from Shami and Hardik Pandya, India was putting the stop on the Netherlands’ innings.
Where did it go wrong for the Netherlands?
Considering that India had decided to bat, Netherlands didn’t do it too poorly. The way Tim Pringle dropped Rohit Sharma in the fifth over showed that they had undoubtedly become affected by the situation. Pringle attempted to go back and run with the ball after Sharma miscued a short delivery over mid-on, but he was unable to take that catch. KL Rahul had already turned around back to the pavilion after missing a flick, and the ball angled in to strike him on the front pad. In order to rebuild the innings against some competent Netherlands’ bowling, Kohli and Sharma joined forces. India seemed unconcerned about the delayed recovery because they understood when to turn up the heat.
And then, with the combined efforts from bowling and batting side, India managed to finish the game by a huge margin of 56 runs, which would definitely be adding on to the Net Run Rate (NRR) of the team.
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