Twitter Reactions: Rohit Sharma and Dhawan pummel Ireland as India post 208

The atmosphere in Malahide was buzzing as there was a sea of blue supporting Team India in the first of the two-match T20I series. The hosts won the toss and opted to bowl first as they decided to bench William Porterfield with India also leaving out the in-form duo of KL Rahul and Dinesh Karthik. But they didn’t miss them at all thanks to some scintillating batting from the openers of the visitors. They literally annihilated the bowlers on a pitch which was a graveyard for them.

After being invited to bat first, the likes of Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma took a couple of overs to get their eye in and then unleashed themselves over the hapless bowlers. There was no margin of error for them with the batsmen in no mood to spare at any cost. George Dockrell was the one who applied brakes to the run-scoring to some extent even as Boyd Rankin bowled well. But it was the exhibition of stroke-making from the superstars of India.

Sixes galore in Malahide

Things were absolutely simple for them as kept on hitting through the line with Dhawan leading the way at the start. Rohit also got into the act soon and they smashed the ball out of the park with utter ease. They were supremely confident as the left-hander also amazingly tried to switch hit against the spinners. Just when everyone thought the duo would play out all the 20 overs, Kevin O’ Brien bowled a perfect length to get rid of Dhawan who scored 74 off 45 deliveries with 5 fours and as many maximums.

However, the wicket in the 16th over didn’t stem the run-flow as Rohit continued to pummel the bowling. He literally toyed with the bowling attack of the home side. He was well on the way to notch up his third ton in the shortest format but Peter Chase had different ideas who castled him with a brilliant delivery. It was rather a superb final over from the young man who was playing only his third game for the country and picked the wickets of Rohit, MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli.

He finished the innings with the figures of 4/35 as India posted a mammoth total of 208 runs on the board after 20 overs. Ireland now will have to bat out of their skins to cause an upset by beating one of the best sides in World cricket.

Here’s how Twitter reacted during the course of the innings:

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