T20 World Cup, India vs Scotland: India hopeful of Afghanistan beating New Zealand to see themselves into the semifinals of ICC T20 World Cup 2021. A big win was necessary, well huge win came smashing 89 runs off just 6.3 overs to finish the game.
India won the toss deciding to bowl first. They were pretty confident of bowling out Scotland as low as possible. The decision was proved perfect when Indian bowlers ripped apart Scotland for just 85 runs.
Starting with Jasprit Bumrah’s slower delivery that got Kyle Coetzer cleaned bowled. He didn’t picked up the pace while preparing for a bouncer or a yorker delivery eventually none came.
The only batter batting confidently was George Munsey. He was battling like he wants to fight and don’t want to throw down the weapon. He took on Ravichandran Ashwin in his first over hitting three boundaries making that particular bowling change irrelevant.
Mohammed Shami took on the attack and straight away found success clamping Munsey who wanted to go downtown. The first over was a wicket maiden. However, the drama emerged when he came back in the 18th over. One run-out and two yorkers finished off Scotland’s innings.
He was well supported by the spinner trio. Ravichandran with a bit expensive picked up one wicket, Varun Chakravarthy although finished wicketless bowled quite well inside powerplay, and the major damage was done from the left arm, Ravindra Jadeja wreaking havoc in the middle overs getting three wickets.
Scotland seemed to have no idea on how to deal with Indian bowling. They were utter mess running around without any destination and in every direction. Equations were out when the innings were finished on how many overs does India has to chase down 85 runs. Turns out that 43 balls were maximum India can afford to even stay into the hunt of the semis.
With the target in mind, KL Rahul and Rohit Sharma went out all guns blazing. KL Rahul in particular was exceptional. He registered the fastest fifty in this ICC T20 World Cup 2021 so far in 19 balls.
India however lost both the openers in this process but the damage was done and it was just a formality. Suryakumar Yadav was beaten on the first ball he faced but the second was deposited straight down the ground to end the nightmare for Scotland.
The captaincy from the Indian captain was the wow factor of this outing on his birthday. Virat Kohli was quick to react and changed the tactics as needed. The bowling changes were well rotated and it was a well-planned innings from India.
A big match is between Afghanistan and New Zealand to decide the second semifinalist in this group after Pakistan. The other group has a similar story as well and there is Australia and South Africa for the semifinal battle.
Watch India vs Scotland highlights, ICC T20 World Cup 2021.
ICC T20 World Cup 2021, India vs Scotland: post match interviews
Ravindra Jadeja: (Player of the Match)
“I was enjoying bowling as the ball was turning. The first wicket was a special one. We knew that we have to win by a big margin and we played well. If we play like this no one can beat us and I hope we continue to play like this.”
Kyle Coetzer:
“We were outclassed totally but we will improve after this type of game. Mark Watt has been excellent for us. The players will find some positive out of this. Michael Leask is a fantastic player for us and is lovely to watch him play.”
Virat Kohli:
“We are sitting just under the semi-final cut-off line and we would see what happens on 7th November. Things did not go well for us in the first two games and losing the toss also hurt us. We wanted to restrict Scotland to around 100-120 and then chase it down. We targeted to chase it down in 8-10 overs but am happy that we did it earlier. We played really well in the warm-up games but a couple of overs of bad phase in the first couple of games hurt us. Shami and Jadeja were exceptional today and I am pleased to see everyone performing well. Having my family here in these times is a celebration for me.”
