'6/7 against Bangladesh was my dream spell' - Deepak Chahar after bagging ICC's T20I Performance of the Year

Out with an injury, Indian pacer Deepak Chahar rose to prominence in 2019 after the likes of Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah went out of the team due to various injuries during the calendar year. Chahar cemented his spot in the Indian T20I side with both of these bowlers missing from the side and performed admirably well, with the T20I series against Bangladesh being his crowning glory.

Chahar picked 8 wickets in the three T20I matches against Bangladesh, helping India come back from losing the first match and pocketing the series 2-1 in the end. These eight wickets included his world record haul of 6 wickets for 7 runs in the Nagpur match, his 6^th T20I for Men in Blue.

These are the best bowling figures by a bowler in T20I history, beating Ajantha Mendis’ 6/8 against Zimbabwe in ICC World T20 2012. For this performance, ICC awarded Chahar with the ICC’s Best Men’s T20I performance in the 2019 award.

“I am very happy to receive this award”: Deepak Chahar

The six-wicket haul by Deepak Chahar was also the second instance of an Indian bowler picking more than five wickets in a T20I innings and bettered Yuzvendra Chahal’s 6/25 against England.

“I am very happy to receive this award. I would like to thank the ICC for this award and to the BCCI for giving me a chance to represent my country. That performance was very special for me. I got an opportunity to play for India after a long time. Taking six wickets conceding only seven runs was a dream performance for me and will always remain close to my heart,” Deepak Chahar said in a statement as quoted by Hindustan Times.

Deepak Chahar's 6/7 against Bangladesh in November are the best figures in the history of men's T20I cricket.

That spell is the T20I Performance of the Year.#ICCAwards pic.twitter.com/QJoXY3OuyQ

— ICC (@ICC) January 15, 2020

He also became the first Indian bowler to pick s hat-trick in international T20 matches during this spell. He took a wicket off the last ball of the 18^th over and then came back to pick wickets off the first two balls of the 20^th over to wrap the match up. He scalped the wickets of Liton Das, Soumya Sarkar, Mohammad Mithun, Aminul Islam, Shaiful Islam, and Mustafizur Rahman during his record haul.

At the moment, the Rajasthan pacer is recuperating from a stress fracture in his back, which ruled him out of the recently concluded home West Indies limited-overs series and also the ongoing Australia ODI series.