India’s Harshal Patel was out in the most bizarre way against New Zealand in the third T20I in Kolkata. The Haryana cricketer, who was playing his second match of his career, was out hit wicket. Everything happened so quickly that even commentators missed what was going on. Coming back to the incident, Patel had been out hit wicket, and started walking back to the dressing room as soon as he realized this. The Kiwi players started to celebrate leaving the commentators and fans wondering. Some of them even speculated that Harshal might have nicked the ball, but later the replays confirmed that he had unintentionally hit his wicket in order to carve out a boundary off Lockie Feguson. Meanwhile he has now become only the second Indian cricketer after KL Rahul to be out in such a manner in a T20 International.
pic.twitter.com/eelIHt718i— Simran (@CowCorner9) November 21, 2021
In his bid to test the team’s character by batting first, the skipper Rohit Sharma led the way with a 56 off 31 balls with five fours and three sixes but despite a blazing start, the Indians stuttered in the middle overs before Harshal Patel (18 off 11 balls) and Deepak Chahar (21 not out off 8 balls) used their long handles which fetched 50 runs in last five overs. Ishan Kishan (29 off 21 balls), Shreyas Iyer (25 off 20 balls) and Venkatesh Iyer (20 off 15 balls) all got starts but couldn’t convert it into a big score.
Having got two flashy back-to-back boundaries off the very first over by Trent Boult, there was no looking back for Rohit. There was no preferential treatment as all the fast bowlers were treated with equal disdain as he and Kishan made full use of the of the Powerplay overs, which yielded 69 runs. Rohit pulled Boult behind square for his first six and hit Adam Milne (0/47 in 4 overs) over long-on for the second maximum and the third off Lockie Ferguson was another pull behind the square into the stand below the giant electronic scoreboard.
(With agencies)
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