Twitter Reactions: Clinical and fearless India swat aside Sri Lanka to go 1-0 up

After bowlers restricted Sri Lanka to 262, Kishan, Shaw and Dhawan made light work of the chase.

By Aditya Gajanan Kukalyekar verified

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4 Min Read

Shikhar Dhawan and Ishan Kishan
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Shikhar Dhawan and Ishan Kishan. (Photo by ISHARA S. KODIKARA/AFP via Getty Images)

India have comfortably defeated Sri Lanka in the first ODI of the three-match series. They chased down 263 runs without even breaking a sweat as their batsmen made light work of the target against an inexperienced home side. If it was Prithvi Shaw and Ishan Kishan displaying some fearless batting, the veteran Shikhar Dhawan showed composure to take India home after the bowlers did their job earlier in the day.

Earlier, Sri Lanka opted to bat first after winning the toss and their openers got the team off to a decent start. India’s new ball bowlers Deepak Chahar and Bhuvneshwar Kumar didn’t find the expected swing while Avishka Fernando displayed his talent playing some wonderful strokes. However, his promising knock of 32 runs was cut short by Yuzvendra Chahal off the very first ball of his spell.

Runs continued to come easily even then with the debutant Bhanuka Rajapaksa playing his shots. Minod Bhanuka was batting cautiously at the other end. But the former threw his wicket away while trying to put Kuldeep Yadav off his line and the chinaman then nicely set up Minod later in the same over to have him caught at slip. Sri Lanka were 89/3 in the 17th over then and the hosts could never dominate the opposition bowling.

Every batsman among top six got starts but none of them stuck it out in the middle to play a big knock. Charith Asalanka and skipper Dasun Shanaka stitched a decent partnership but even they left the team reeling in the middle. Sri Lanka could never get the required acceleration in the run-scoring and it was only due to Chamika Karunaratne’s late fireworks that they got to 262 runs in their 50 overs.

He remained unbeaten on 43 off 35 balls smashing 19 runs in the final over off Bhuvneshwar Kumar who was the only wicketless bowler for India. Krunal Pandya was the most economical bowler for India conceding just 26 runs in his 10 overs.

India canter to victory in chase

Though the 263-run chase looked a bit tough to start with for India’s inexperienced batting line-up, the opener Prithvi Shaw had other ideas. He played some sumptuous strokes from the word go leaving the Sri Lanka pacers clueless. The front foot drives and backfoot punches were a treat to watch as the visitors raced past the 50-run mark in the fifth over of the chase itself.

Dhananjaya de Silva got the better of him in the sixth over but not before he scored 43 off 24 balls. The debutant Ishan Kishan then arrived and slammed a six off the first ball he faced and followed that up with a four clearing his intentions. He continued batting in the same fashion and dominated in the partnership with his skipper Shikhar Dhawan who was enjoying all the batting from the youngsters from the other end.

Kishan soon got to his half-century as he became the first Indian to score a fifty on both T20I and ODI debut. The southpaw, however, couldn’t convert it into a big knock. He got out on 59 off 42 deliveries with eight fours and two sixes and by that time, India had wiped more than half the runs in the chase with more than 32 overs to go.

All this while, Dhawan was just batting calmly and he took control of the innings after Kishan’s dismissal. The left-hander played like the veteran batsman holding the innings and made sure there were no hiccups in the chase at any stage. He stitched partnerships with Manish Pandey (26) first and then with Suryakumar Yadav (31*) to take India home in the 37th over. Dhawan himself remained unbeaten on 86 runs to register a resounding win on his captaincy debut as India went 1-0 up in the series.

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