June 18, 2017 was a nightmare for the Indian team and its fans. The dream of winning the champions trophy for the second time in a row was shattered when Team India faced a harsh defeat by a big margin of 180 runs from Pakistan.
Indian batting collapsed when they came on the field to chase Pakistan’s huge total of 338 runs.
The Oval ground in England hosted the final match for the ICC Champions Trophy on this day in 2017. The Indian skipper Virat Kohli won the toss and elected to bowl first, which turned out to be the wrong decision. Fakhar Zaman and Azhar Ali made 114 and 59 runs respectively and gave a good start to the team, and had a partnership of 128 runs for the first wicket. Mohammed Hafeez also scored 57 runs and Babar Azam contributed 46 runs.
Indian bowlers were thrashed by the Pakistani batsmen. Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Hardik Pandya and Kedar Jadhav got one wicket each while Jasprit Bumrah, Ravichandran Ashwin, and Ravindra Jadeja left without any wickets. Bumrah was hit for 8 fours and Ashwin was hit for 4 fours and 3 sixes. Jadeja also had an economy rate of 8.37.
The Indian team had the worst start possible with Mohammed Amir taking the wicket of Rohit Sharma in the first over of the innings. Virat Kohli also became Amir’s victim and could make only five runs. Shikhar Dhawan could not do much against Amir and became his third victim. Legendary batsmen like Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh also could not do anything against the Pakistani bowling attack. Hardik Pandya was the only Indian batsman who showed courage against the bowling attack and made 76 runs in 43 balls with four-fours and six-sixes.
Amir and Hassan Ali gave an extraordinary performance taking three wickets each. Shadab Khan and Mohammed Hafeez also got one wicket each. It was the first ICC tournament as a captain for Virat Kohli but unfortunately, he missed the opportunity to lift the cup.
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