One refreshing change in the Gautam Gambhir era is the team management’s stress on all-rounders.

While India had been struggling to fit in an extra bowler — after the five specialists in the playing XI — head coach Gambhir has been trying to include players who can bowl.

As a result, there have been at least seven bowlers in every T20I which had made things much easier for captain Suryakumar Yadav.

The latest addition to the list is Nitish Kumar Reddy.

Playing only his second T20I in the second T20I in Delhi smashed 74 off 34 balls which included four boundaries and seven sixes.

After his half-century, which took only 27 balls, Reddy plundered Mehidy Hasan Miraz for three sixes and a four in one over. Off the last 21 balls he faced, he ransacked 61 runs.

Man of the Match Reddy bowled two tidy overs upfront and then returned to pick up two wickets at the death to finish with 2/23 from four overs at the Kotla.

Reddy, 21, who made his debut in the current series in Gwalior, was fast-tracked into the side after a successful IPL 2024 for Sunrisers Hyderabad, where he scored 303 runs at a strike rate of 142.92.

“It feels great representing India... I want to live in this moment,” he said at the post-match presentation.

He will be looking to continue in the same vein in the third match of the series at his ‘home ground’ in Hyderabad on Saturday. A win will give India a clean sweep in three-match T20I series too following their triumph in the two-Test series.

Assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate said the team management’s effort was to “build a strong core” ahead of the 2026 T20 World Cup.

“There are guys who can fill multiple roles which are so important for balance depending on where we play. You look at someone like Riyan (Parag) who hasn’t batted much in this series.

“We’ve seen someone (Reddy) who can bat at 4-5 as well as being a finisher. So, it’s trying to fit as many of those pieces together as we can in these bilateral series,” Ten Doeschate said.