Martin Guptill fought alone. Fifty, but the rest of the New Zealand batsmen could not stand in front of the Indian bowlers. In the third T20 match of the series at Eden Gardens, Kolkata, India lost to Rohit Sharma by a huge margin of 63 runs. New Zealand’s innings stopped at 111 in reply to India’s 184 runs.
India won the toss and elected to bat. Captain Rohit and Ishan Kisan took the storm from the beginning. In the opening pair, they scored 69 runs in the power play. Kishan was caught by wicketkeeper Tim Seifert off Mitchell Santner. That was New Zealand’s first success. After that Surya Kumar Yadav and Rishabh Pant lost two wickets quickly but Rohit remained steadfast at one end. India’s T20 captain stopped with 57 off 31 balls. He had 5 fours and 3 sixes in his innings. Shreyash Iyer, Venkatesh Iyer and Deepak Chahar were instrumental in taking India’s collection beyond the reach of New Zealand. Shreyash made 25 off 20 balls, Venkatesh made 20 off 15 balls. Chahar was more aggressive. He made 21 off 8 balls.
Mitchell Santner of New Zealand took 3 wickets. He has scored 28 runs in 4 overs. Trent Bolt took 1 wicket with 31 runs. However, Adam Milne and Lucky Ferguson got one wicket each but gave 48 and 45 runs respectively. Ish Sodhi also took 1 wicket in 4 overs with 31 runs.
Batting in reply, New Zealand never won the toss. Guptill made 51 off 36 balls. But the highest collection among the rest is 16. That’s Seifert’s. In addition, Lucky Ferguson saved the value of New Zealand by 14 runs from 8 balls. Without his innings, it would have been difficult for the Kiwis to make 100 runs.
Akshar Patel took 3 wickets for 69 runs in the main defeat of New Zealand’s innings. Herschel Patel took 2 wickets. In addition, Deepak Chahar, Yuzbendra Chahal, Venkatesh Iyer — each took one wicket.
