‘If we put our heart in for one, one-and-a-half hours we can pull it off’ – Suryakumar Yadav reveals his message to team before Pallekele heist

Suryakumar Yadav (Twitter)

Suryakumar Yadav was proud of the display of character by his team during the third T20I against Sri Lanka in Pallekele on Tuesday, July 30, as India fought back strongly after being reduced to 48/5 in the first innings. The tourists got the better of the hosts in a Super Over to complete a 3-0 series sweep.

Suryakumar received a lot of plaudits for his unique captaincy calls during the low-scoring thriller. Sri Lanka were comfortably placed at 108/1 at the end of the 15th over and needed just 30 runs off as many balls to avoid a clean sweep. However, the Indian bowlers made the opposition batters work hard for their runs and eventually took the match to a Super Over.

Indian fans were taken on a nostalgia trip with the death overs performance from the Men in Blue as they had successfully defended 30 runs off the last five overs in the T20 World Cup final last month. While it was Arshdeep Singh and Hardik Pandya who bowled the last two overs in the summit clash, this time it was the the unexpected combination of Rinku Singh and Suryakumar who did the damage.

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Sri Lanka needed just nine runs to win off the last two overs with six wickets in the bank. Rinku, who had bowled just 60 deliveries in his 10-year-old T20 career, conceded just three runs and picked up two wickets in the penultimate over while Suryakumar bowled the last over and picked up two wickets for five runs to take the game to a Super Over.

“More than the last over, I feel when we were around 30 for 4 and 48 for 5, how the boys showed character in the middle and took the game away from them, I felt 140 was par score on that track and the way they batted. When we were going in during our fielding sessions, I told them I had seen such kinds of games. I think if we put our heart in for one, one-and-a-half hours we can pull it off,” Suryakumar said.

Washington Sundar conceded just two runs in the Super Over before bagging the wickets of Kusal Perera and Pathum Nissanka. Suryakumar swept the first ball from Maheesh Theekshana for a boundary to take India to a hard-fought win.

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Sri Lanka’s batting was abysmal in the T20I series as they suffered mind-boggling batting collapses in all three games. The Lankan Lions will want to start afresh in the upcoming ODI series against India, which begins with the first match on Friday, August 2.