India produced a dominating display of cricket once again to crush Scotland by eight wickets and 13.3 overs to spare in their group 2 match of the ICC T20 Cricket World Cup 2021 played at the Dubai international cricket Stadium on Friday night, to move up to the third position in the points table of the competition.
The victory by a massive margin of eight wickets has given India the best Net Run Rate (NRR) among all the teams in their group as they now anxiously wait for the game on Sunday between Afghanistan and New Zealand to know about their fate.
All of India will be supporting Afghanistan against the Kiwi side when these two teams meet on Sunday, as a victory for the Afghans will mean that India will advance to the semifinals round of the ICC T20 World Cup 2021. The competition of making it to the semifinals is currently between these three teams given that Pakistan have already booked one slot, with four victories in as many matches in this World Cup.
Everything went right for India and their captain, Virat Kohli as the birthday boy, who turned 33 on Friday, won the coin toss and elected to field. Later on, Kohli revealed that the idea was to keep Scotland around 110-120, but India’s star bowlers in Mohammed Shami and Ravindra Jadeja blew away any kind of resistance from Scotland to bowl them out for a poor score of 85 from 17.4 overs.
Shami returned with his career-best figures of 3-1-15-3 whereas Jadeja also was extremely impressive in his spell of 4-0-15-3. Among the others, Jasprit Bumrah was once again on the target with a stunning spell of 3.4-1-10-2, whereas spin bowler Ravichandran Ashwin took 1/29 from his four overs.
For Scotland, George Munsey scored 24 from 19 balls while Michael Leask made a 12-ball 21 which were the two highest scores in their innings. Calum MacLeod made 16 whereas Mark Watt contributed with 14 vital runs in what turned out to be a disappointing outing for the Scottish side.
In reply, India needed to chase down the target of 85 as quickly as possible in order to boost their NRR. Opening batsman KL Rahul and Rohit Sharma did not disappoint, adding 70 runs in only five overs to put India in a commanding position.
Rohit fell for a 16-ball 30 studded with five boundaries and one six, but Rahul was the star of India’s chase as he smacked the quickest half century of the tournament, scoring 50 from 19 balls with the help of six boundaries and three sixes. Rohit was dismissed by Brad Wheal whereas Rahul fell to Watt towards the ending stages of India’s chase. The winning runs were hit by Suryakumar Yadav, who finished the game with a six in the company of India captain Kohli, who was unbeaten on two.
India will be required to continue with their dominating show and record yet another big victory when they take on Namibia in their final group stage match of this World Cup on Sunday.