Spin continued to trouble England and for the second time in the series, it was Varun Chakravarthy who turned out to be the perpetrator of another English collapse. However, neither Varun nor his teammates could have the last laugh as the English bowlers got their stuff right to win the third T20I by 26 runs in Rajkot on Tuesday and stay alive in this five-match series.
On a belter of a pitch at the Niranjan Shah Stadium, the Tamil Nadu and Kolkata Knight Riders leg-spinner kept targeting the stumps besides making fine use of the drift to clean up the England middle order. He also registered his second fifer in T20I cricket (5/24), which was massive in restricting the visitors to 171/9 even after they were 83/1 in the ninth over.
Given the conditions with dew taking effect as the game went on, England’s total was certainly below par. But this time, their quicks ensured to cut down on easy boundary balls and rightly took a bit of pace off, forcing the Indian batters to err as well as effecting more and more dot balls.
Fortunately for England, the likes of Jofra Archer and Mark Wood avoided unleashing close to 150kmph short-pitched thunderbolts that had given India easy runs in the first two games.
On top of that was Adil Rashid’s immaculate bowling. The vastly experienced leg-spinner (1/15) not only finished without conceding a single boundary, but also took the vital wicket of the man-in-form Tilak Varma, cleaning the left-hander up with an excellent piece of classical leg-spin bowling.
“The ball gripped, spun nicely and just went through the gates. Overall, it was a splendid effort with the ball,” Rashid said of the dismissal of Tilak.
“The pitch was a bit slow and the ball kept low too. So, we had decided to take a bit of pace off the ball,” Rashid added.
Tilak’s dismissal came at a critical phase of the game, going a long way in tilting the balance in favour of England after Wood had picked up another key wicket, that of Suryakumar Yadav, forcing a mishit from the India captain.
What made Rashid’s spell even more special was his ploy of focusing more on the classical leg-spin instead of experimenting with his lines, which stemmed the flow of runs. Following Tilak’s departure, Hardik Pandya, Washington Sundar and Axar Patel struggled to get the big shots as the equation kept getting tougher for the hosts as they could only manage 145/9.
Figures-wise, pacer James Overton (3/23) stood out as he also took the wicket of Pandya — who took time to settle down — in the penultimate over to virtually confirm England’s victory. But if not for Rashid’s impactful spell, India could well have sealed the series on Tuesday.
With the bat too, Rashid did a decent job with an unbeaten 10 off nine balls and stitching an unbroken 24 for the last wicket with Wood to drag England past 170. Some credit needs to go to Liam Livingstone as well for his 43 off 24 balls, which included as many as five maximums.
Ben Duckett (51) and Jos Buttler (24) had forged 76 between them to have England strongly placed at 83/1 in the ninth over. But the arrival of Varun, who tries his best to take part in as many white-ball tournaments as possible in his state, reopened England’s spin wounds as they collapsed to 127/8 after 16 overs.
Livingstone’s blows thereafter assumed a fair bit of importance then.
Shami’s return
The long wait for Mohammed Shami finally ended as he made his international comeback on Tuesday. In what was his first India appearance since the ODI World Cup final in November 2023, Shami came in place of a rested Arshdeep Singh and finished wicketless in his three overs and conceded 25 runs.
It certainly wasn’t a great comeback for the 34-year-old pacer, who bowled those three overs in two spells: a couple of overs in his first and one in his second.
Shami was hit for two boundaries and a maximum but to be fair to him, one did come across a pretty good presentation of the seam, which has been the key to his success.
