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India's ace spinner Yuzvendra Chahal again dazzled with the bowl as he snared a brilliant three-fer to help India restrict England to a lowly total of 260 in the third and the final ODI in Manchester on Sunday.
Riding on an impressive spell of 3/60, Chahal leapfrogged former India's all-rounder Yuvraj Singh as the star spinner now has more scalps than the 2011 World Cup's 'Player of the Series'.
While Yuvraj took 110 wickets in a total of 301 ODI matches, Chahal took just 64 matches to breach the former's wicket tally.
Chahal remained wicketless in his first seven overs and was brought back into the attack in the 44th over. He took the wickets of the rest of England's batters to restrict their innings. Thanks to Chahal's heroics, England's tailenders were dismissed quickly and the Three Lions have folded for 259.
Chahal had made his ODI debut against Zimbabwe in 2016. He has been a regular in India's ODI team since 2017 and was part of the squad in the 2019 World Cup. He continues to lead the spin attack and is the only permanent frontline spinner in the white-ball teams.
With 111 scalps, Chahal sits at the 19th spot in the list of Indian bowlers with the most wickets. The list is topped by Anil Kumble, who scalped 334 wickets. The former India captain is followed by Javagal Srinath (315), Ajit Agarkar (288), Zaheer Khan (269) and Harbhajan Singh (265) in the top 5 list.
Talking about the match, Hardik Pandya grabbed a career-best 4/24 as a disciplined India bowled out England for 259 with more than four overs to spare in the series-deciding third and final ODI.
Skipper Jos Buttler top-scored for England with an 80-ball 60, but it was the flamboyant all-rounder from Gujarat, who dominated the first half of the match with his excellent bowling, sending out a warning to the opponents in the year of the T20 World Cup.
Playing in place of injured Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj got a massive confidence boost early on, when he dismissed Jonny Bairstow with his third ball of the day. As the England opener shaped up to play it on the leg-side, the bat turned in his hand and the ball ballooned to Shreyas Iyer at mid-off following a leading edge.
His tails up, Siraj then ran in to bowl to the prolific Joe Root, got the ball to move away, and the outside edge was nicely taken by skipper Rohit Sharma at second slip. Siraj, in fact, squared Root up with his late movement.
With two of their in-from batters back in the hut for ducks, England were in trouble at 12/2.
This was after Jason Roy (41) collected three boundaries off Mohammed Shami, including a four through mid off in the very first delivery of the match.
It would be interesting to see whether India can clinch the ODI series after claiming the T20I series against England.
