India opener Abhishek Sharma’s 14-ball 50 led the hosts to a T20 series win over New Zealand with a crushing eight-wicket victory in Guwahati.<\/p>\n
Chasing 154 to win, the 25-year-old smashed an unbeaten 68 off 20 deliveries, while Suryakumar Yadav crashed 57 not out off 26 as the hosts passed their target with 10 overs to spare.<\/p>\n
Victory gave India an unassailable 3-0 lead in the five-match series – an emphatic response to losing the preceding one-day international series against the Black Caps.<\/p>\n
After being put into bat, New Zealand were restricted to 153-9 off their 20 overs, Glenn Phillips top scoring with 48 off 40 balls.<\/p>\n
Fast bowler Jasprit Bumrah took an impressive 3-17, while Hardik Pandya and Ravi Bishnoi took two wickets each.<\/p>\n
Sanju Samson was bowled for a duck off the first ball of India’s reply by New Zealand seamer Matt Henry.<\/p>\n
But Abhishek and Ishan Kishan put on 53 in just 19 balls, before the latter was dismissed by leg-spinner Ish Sodhi for 28 off 13.<\/p>\n
Abhishek continued his onslaught, passing 50 with a six off the final ball of the powerplay.<\/p>\n
Only six players, and one Indian – Yuvraj Singh against England in 2007 – have reached the mark quicker in men’s T20 internationals.<\/p>\n
Abhishek clattered seven fours and five sixes in total, while captain Suryakumar hit six fours and three sixes in his knock, sealing victory with consecutive boundaries.<\/p>\n
The fourth T20 is in Visakhapatnam on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Holders and co-hosts India are the favourites to defend their T20 World Cup title when the competition begins on 7 February.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"India opener Abhishek Sharma’s 14-ball 50 led the hosts to a T20 series win over New Zealand with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-390348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}