Indian Bowlers. Winning the third one-day international by ten wickets over Zimbabwe in Harare, India whitewashed the three-match series with 3-0 on Wednesday. Dhoni’s boys outclassed in all departments by first bowling them out for their lowest total of 123 in the series with Bumrah grabbing 4/22 and then romping home in 21.5 overs.
This time, the luck didn’t favour the Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni as Zimbabwe won the toss and elected to bat first as they had invited to bat first in their previous two games by India.
But they fall down in front of Indian bowlers as they did not even play fifty overs. In the second over, opener Masakadza tries to smash that one away through the cover region but edges it straight into Rahul’s hands and Kulkarni got his first wicket.
Indian Bowlers
Indian Bowlers
Then came a difficult period for the Indian bowlers and the hosts completed fifty in the 18th over. In 19th over Axar brought relief when Chibhabha caught out in the deep by Bumrah on Chahal’s bowl. He went after scoring 27 runs on 66 balls.
From then Sibanda took the charge and changed the gear. He played good shot in between until Chahal bowled a flighted delivery and himself takes Sibanda’s catch. He was gone after playing 71 bowls scoring 38 runs.
And adding just only 20 runs Zimbabwe lost six wickets. After Sibanda, Bumrah knocks over Maruma with the one which comes sharply into the right-hander. Bumrah bagged another one as Chigumbura out for a golden duck.
Cremer joined the rest of the team in the dugout as he is trapped in front by the Axar faster-one.
Mutumbami pushes at the Bumrah delivery and the ball takes the leading edge, Rahul completed the catch. Mupariwa was the fourth wicket of Bumrah.
Donald Tiripano run out by Dhaval Kulkarni and the whole batting exhausted scoring 123 runs in 42.2 overs. Sibanda was the most successful batsman for the hosts and except him no other batsman from Zimbabwe able to score more than thirty runs.
Bumrah was the leading wicket-taker for the visitors India with four wickets, Yuzvendra Chahal bagged two while Axar Patel and Dhaval Kulkarni shared one wicket each.
India was again chasing a low total. Faiz Fazal made his international debut for India. He came as a replacement for Karun Nair. In this series, India tried three openers and all were playing this first series.
India openers were looking good even Fazal was playing good cricket shots, he has his experience of domestic cricket maybe that’s why he was not struggling out there on the crease. Rahul and Fazal were building their innings and he was not facing any difficulty against Zimbabwe bowlers.
Both openers remained not-out throughout the innings, Rahul scored 63 runs playing 70 balls while debutant Fazal hit 55 runs in 61 balls. No bowler has got any wicket.
KL Rahul was declared the player of the match and player of the series.
This is the first clean-sweep for MS Dhoni as captain on the foreign soil. With this series,
India also completed a hat-trick of whitewashes against the hosts Zimbabwe. India has also won earlier ODI series by 5-0 and 3-0 margin in 2013 and 2015 under the captaincy of Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane respectively.
This is the 107th win for Dhoni as captain, he is now the second most successful ODI captain behind Ricky Ponting who won 165 matches in the ODI history. Dhoni is now in the second spot with Alan Border.
Indian skipper and wicket-keeper Dhoni became the first Indian wicketkeeper-batsman to complete 350 dismissals in ODI cricket.
Dhoni now stands fourth on the overall list behind Kumar Sangakkara (482), Adam Gilchrist (472) and Mark Boucher (424).
