India 297 for 6 (Samson 111, Suryakumar 75, Pandya 47, Tanzim 3-66) beats. Bangladesh 7 for 164 (Hridoy 63, Litton 42, Bishnoi 3-30, Mayank 2-32) with 133 runs.
Samson, Suryakumar surprise Bangladesh.
When Tanzim Hasan got Abhishek Sharma out with a bouncer first ball, little did Bangladesh know that it would be their last moment of joy of the evening. Samson had already disturbed Taskin Ahmed’s lines by dropping back in the second over and hitting four consecutive fours. New batsman Suryakumar took only one ball before hitting his first six balls.
Samson should not have been left behind. He stayed back and beat Mustafizur Rahman with 6 and 4 runs. Suryakumar then finished the powerplay with a shot that should be considered bold but is standard for him, pulling the ball behind the square when most batsmen would be happy to be right behind. The last of them, a pull-over midwicket, took India to 82 runs, their joint-highest powerplay score.
Suryakumar had to stretch a carved six over the back point that he had no right to send there, but the most memorable shot came from Samson. Some of his eight sixes were bold, but not muscular. His control to strike rate of 236.17 was as high as 81.
The most surprising of Samson’s sixes came when he almost stepped on the stumps and drove off the back foot over extra cover to make a short length to Mustafizur’s slow ball. Legspinner Rishad Hossain, who had scored 55 in the last match, has just been shot. He continued to make length errors as he started off with a short ball, but in the second he went on to force Samson to hit a six on the ground without using his feet. Some of it was the pitch, but most of it was his length. It’s too full. In the end, Rishad’s two overs resulted in 46 runs.
The innings was monkey-like behind Samson. Samson’s talent is yet to translate into numbers in international T20s. This was shown in his spectacular celebrations as he reached India’s second-fastest fifties and hundreds. For a change, Suryakumar had to settle for playing support action in the second wicket stand for 173 runs.
Normally one would expect some relief from breaking such a long standing stance, but Riyan Parag and Hardik Pandya had other ideas. Parag took three balls to reach his boundary and so did Pandya. Between them, they scored 81 runs off 31 balls, hitting 4 each. Pandya outscored Samson’s six off the back foot with an extra cover as he made Tanzim’s attack bigger. Again it was a slow, short ball with no space, but it still went over extra cover.
Two wickets in the final over meant India fell short of reaching 300, but that wasn’t much of a consolation for Bangladesh.
