The flamboyant Suryakumar Yadav reaffirmed his status as a short-format batting wizard with another scintillating knock as India bullied Zimbabwe by 71 runs on Sunday to set up a T20 World Cup semifinal date with the mighty England.
Surya, who has matched the peerless Virat Kohli stroke-for-stroke in this World Cup, smashed an unbeaten 61 off 25 balls in India’s imposing total of 186/5.
‘Mr 360’, who was scoring at his usual strike rate, pummelled an unimaginable shot that left everyone scratching their heads. Earlier, the shot initialy deceived everyone for being a fluke, but later the replays showed something different. The commentators were quick to notice that the shot was intentional by Surya. Richard Ngaravwent across, outside off and the India batter followed him, went down on one knee and scooped the full toss over fine leg for an unthinkable six.
Suryakumar had played an innovative overhead scoop which left everyone awestruck.
Here's the video..
Suryakumar's blitzkrieg was decorated with with four sixes and six fours. He powered India to 186/5 runs in 20 overs as opener KL Rahul also scored a fifty.
Suryakumar Yadav also became the first Indian to score over 1000 runs in a calendar year in T20I history. The top-order batsman recently achieved the number one rank in ICC's T20I best batsmen list.
Zimbabwe’s batting depth was never enough to surpass that score and they were shot out for 115 in 17.2 overs with Ravichandran Ashwin (3/22) enjoying a good day at the office.
Save Axar Patel (0/36 in 3 overs), all the other Indian bowlers were on target and among wickets in one of the most lopsided games of this global event.
Hardik Pandya and Mohammed Shami took two wickets apiece while Arshdeep Singh and Bhuvneshwar Kumar shared a wicket each.
India finished on top of group 2 and will now play their fourth T20 World Cup semifinal (after 2007, 2014, 2016) against Jos Buttler’s England in Adelaide on November 10.
