'World champions played like world champions': Sikandar Raza praises Team India following 2nd T20I

Sikandar Raza. Pic/AFP

Following the defeat against India in the second T20I of the five-match series on Sunday, Zimbabwe skipper Sikandar Raza hailed the Men in Blue saying that the World Champions played like World Champions.

Abhishek Sharma's blistering century followed by disciplined bowling by Indian bowlers helped the Shubman Gill-led side beat Zimbabwe by 100 runs in the second T20I played at the Harare Sports Club on Sunday to level five-match series 1-1.

"The world champions will eventually play like world champions. Dropping catches today certainly hurt us today. I expected 200 on this wicket today but they got 30 runs more. Coming into the chase, I thought it would be a close game but it wasn't to be, the top-order didn't fire. Blessing has grown by leaps and bounds, he is very hungry and his graph will keep going up as long as he stays fit. It's a task we have been talking about since a long time, today we came out positive and played our shots, lot of the issues occurred due to inexperience," he said.

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Summarizing the match, Team India skipper Shubman Gill won the toss and elected to bat first.

Batting first, India slammed a massive total of 234/2 in 20 overs with the knocks from Abhishek Sharma (100 runs in 47 balls with seven fours and eight sixes) and Ruturaj Gaikwad (77' runs from 47 balls with 11 fours, 1 six). Rinku Singh played a quickfire knock of 48 runs from just 22 balls which included five sixes and two fours in his innings at a strike rate of 218.18.

For the hosts, one wicket each was snapped by Blessing Muzarbani and Wellington Masakadza in their respective spells in the match.

Chasing a big total of 235 runs, Zimbabwe was bundled out for 134 runs in 18.4 overs. The highest scorer for the side was their opener Wessly Madhevere who scored 43 runs from 39 balls with the help of three fours and a six. All-rounder Luke Jongwe scored 33 runs in 26 balls which included four boundaries in his innings.

For Men in Blue, the pick of the bowlers were the right-arm seamers Avesh Khan and Mukesh Kumar who bagged three wickets each in their spells where they conceded 15 and 37 runs respectively. Two wickets were taken by Ravi Bishnoi and one wicket was taken by Washington Sundar in their respective spells.

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