Indian bowling struggled again with Proteas’ victory in the Indore T20I game: For the second time in succession, India’s bowlers conceded 200-plus runs in the T20I series against South Africa, which suffered a 49-run loss to the hosts in the third T20I at the Holkar Cricket Stadium here on Tuesday. As has been the trend in their last few T20I outings, India conceded 73 runs in the last 5 overs as the Proteas posted a total of 227-3 in 20 overs. Kohli was not there and so was not Rahul, but this 49-run defeat has definitely put the Indian bowling again under the scanner before the upcoming main event.
Let’s start from the beginning. India won the toss and invited South Africa to bat first. It was welcomed in a very aggressive manner by the South African batsmen. Umesh Yadav shed the first blood when Bavuma was dismissed cheaply in the 5th over of the innings. After that QDK and Rossouw seemed to be enjoying the Indian bowling. A brilliant throw from Shreyas Iyer sent QDK back to the pavilion after scoring 68 off 43 balls. Riley Rossouw’s unbeaten maiden ton and Miller’s quick 19 helped South Africa to reach 227 for the loss of 3 wickets
Now if we talk about batting, then Rohit Sharma was out in zero in the first T20 as well and got out in zero in the last too. Out of his last 6 innings, Nagpur’s 46 and Guwahati’s 43 were the only innings that helped the team. Shreyas Iyer too went soon back to the pavilion. Birthday boy Rishabh pant actually played well in his tiny innings and soon was caught at the point. karthik (DK) played a brilliant knock of 46 in just 21 balls. After that, the rest of India’s batsmen come but South African bowling did not allow any good partnership.
Indian Bowling Struggle
India came up with 6 bowling options consisting of four fast bowlers and two spinners. Deepak Chahar bowls his first 2 overs very well and his next 2 overs i.e. 17th and 20th over in which he was properly remanded. Harshal Patel considered a death-over specialist, completed his quota of 4 overs in the 17th over itself and Axar Patel got only one over.
Let’s take a look at Indian bowling stats:
| BOWLING | Overs | Runs | Wickets | ECON | 0s | 4s | 6s | WD | NB |
| Deepak Chahar | 4 | 48 | 1 | 12.00 | 11 | 1 | 5 | 3 | 1 |
| Mohammed Siraj | 4 | 44 | 0 | 11.00 | 7 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Ravichandran Ashwin | 4 | 35 | 0 | 8.75 | 7 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| Umesh Yadav | 3 | 34 | 1 | 11.33 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Harshal Patel | 4 | 49 | 0 | 12.25 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 0 |
| Axar Patel | 1 | 13 | 0 | 13.00 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Every bowler except Ravi Ashwin was leaking runs at an average of 11 or above 11 runs per over and was not taking wickets in the middle year which is not a good thing at all.
ALSO READ: India likely to call Mohd Shami as Bumrah’s replacement for T20 World Cup 2022
Who Said What?
Rahul Dravid (India Coach): “I think it’s good to get the right results in both these home series wins. In this format of the game, you need to have the rub of the green go our way, which didn’t happen in the Asia Cup.” On India’s aggressive batting, he said “We’ve made a decision after the last T20 World Cup where we sat down as a group and decided to play more positively. We believe we have the quality as a group to play more aggressively, we’ve been able to do that without being bowled out too often.”
On Bumrah being ruled out, he quoted that “It happens, but it is a great opportunity for someone to stand up. We will miss him, we will miss his personality around the group for sure.” Dravid On DK’s promotion today said “I think today was an opportunity to give these guys some batting. It is tough on guys like Dinesh and Rishabh who don’t get too many hits in the middle. I felt they were batting really well at one moment, had they played longer we might have gotten closer. I feel batting at 6, it’s always tough when you have to bat just 5-10 balls, so it’s always nice to get a few balls under their belt like they did today.”
He later said “We are going to do our best (in the upcoming T20 World Cup 2022), we’ve really worked hard and we can just hope for the best. In tournaments like those, you need to play really well but we need a bit of luck as well. We hope to bring smiles to people’s faces. I think since crowds have been allowed into stadiums, we’ve got great support everywhere we’ve gone and the boys are really encouraged by that support. We’ll have that in Australia as well, we’ll try our best.”
Temba Bavuma (SA captain): “A win like this is always good for confidence. We struggled with the bat in the first game, and our bowling wasn’t the best in the last game, but we were clinical today on batting as well as bowling. A lot to take from this game. We didn’t turn up with the bat in the first game. In the second game, we couldn’t execute our plans. We were a lot clear in the field today, it was a lot more clinical performance today. We need the points to qualify for the World Cup 2023. Some new guys will be coming in with some fresh energy.”
READ MORE: 3 Learnings from India VS South Africa T20I Series. India Win Series 2-1.
Rohit Sharma (India captain): “As a team we said at the beginning, no matter what happens with the result – there’s always room for improvement. We want to keep getting better as a team. Teams have been quite challenging, they can challenge all departments. Something we have been talking about at length. We need to look at a lot of things. Surya’s form is a concern (laughs). We need to work on our bowling. We played against two quality sides, we came across tough challenges. We need to see what better we can do. We are working towards that, guys need a lot of clarity, it’s my job to make sure it happens. It’s a work in progress, we need to keep working and keep finding answers to it. A lot of the guys haven’t been to Australia, that’s why we are going there early. We want to play on the bouncy pitches of Perth, we want to see what we can do there. Only 7,8 members of the squad have been to Australia, so we have organized a few practice games. We need to understand what combination we can play. Bumrah is out of the World Cup, so we need to find a bowler who has experience bowling in Australia. Not sure who that bowler is going to be, we will see once we travel to Australia, we’ll find it out there.”
For more updates, visit our page: ICC CRICKET SCHEDULE