SL vs IND: Twitter not happy with Shikhar Dhawan for his painful knock of 40 runs in 2nd T20I
Dhawan started well in the powerplay but struggled as pitch got slow as the innings progressed.
The ongoing T20I series between Sri Lanka and India was supposed to be dress rehearsal for certain places in order to seal their spots in the T20 World Cup squad to be played later this year. However, with the COVID striking the Indian camp, all those talks went for the toss. As many as eight players including Krunal Pandya who contracted the virus were not available for India in the second T20I.
This affected their team balance a lot as the visitors could play only five specialist batsmen in their playing XI. Out of them, three batsmen – Devdutt Padikkal, Nitish Rana and Ruturaj Gaikwad – were the debutants and the skipper Shikhar Dhawan had to anchor the innings.
His place in the first-choice playing XI has been under the scanner for a long time now in the shortest format. Dhawan himself had said that he would look to strengthen his place in the Indian team in the series. However, after the first two matches, especially in the second T20I, he ended up playing slowly with strike-rate below 100.
Dhawan scored 40 off 42 balls
Shikhar Dhawan opened the innings with Ruturaj Gaikwad and started off well stitching 45 runs for the opening wicket. He batted well at the start churning out well but as the innings progressed, the pitch got extremely slow and it started turning as well. Sri Lanka also introduced the spinners making life tough for Dhawan and the other batsmen.
The southpaw tried his best to get out of the jail but the likes of Akila Dananjaya, Ramesh Mendis, Wanindu Hasaranga and others didn’t let him score freely. Despite starting off at a good pace, by the time he got out, Dhawan had scored only 40 runs off 42 balls and expectedly, the fans weren’t happy with him at all. The conditions were certainly tough to bat but on social media, such things aren’t taken into consideration with fans making judgements soon.
As far as India is concerned, the innings didn’t have any pace and despite having wickets in hand, they could never up the ante. Eventually, they ended up scoring only 132 runs in their 20 overs and interestingly, Shikhar Dhawan turned out to be the highest scorer of the innings.
Here’s how Twitter reacted to his innings:
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