KL Rahul, in absence of the injured Rohit Sharma, captained the team India. In the 10th over, he handed the ball to Shivam Dube. By then, Tim Seifert and Ross Taylor who was well informed about the conditions eventually decided to go after him, and they hit 34 runs in that over. New Zealand was returning in a better position and India was under pressure.
It was like when Rahul moved towards Bumrah and the match was turned around by him. In 12th over Bumrah gave 6 runs and slowly, India again started making pressure on New Zealand. As Tim Seifert was dismissed this took a charge and from 116/3 New Zealand reached 133/8 in just 4.3 overs.
Once again Bumrah was the star as his accurate yorkers were bowled to dismiss Daryl Mitchell and the same dose he has been repeated to dismiss Tim Southee. From the other end, Navdeep Saini and Shardul Thakur also responded well.
The main reason which changed the match was the utilization of Bumrah and according to former pacer of Pakistan Shoaib Akhtar, the main biggest X-factor of India was that fast bowler.
Shoaib Akhtar Praises Jasprit Bumrah
“Jasprit Bumrah is like a class act. To come back in a full rhythm – it took 2-3 matches. For some bowlers, it took a lot of time to make them come back from injuries. Today Bumrah looked a class apart like a couple of series have been taken by him. For him, 3 for 12 was just superb. In the death overs, Bumrah will not allow you to score 25-30 runs. Saini and Shardul were also good but in my view, for the Indian side, Bumrah was the X-factor,” On his Youtube channel Akhtar said.
With the game-changing figure of 4-1-12-3, he was named as man of the match. “At one point the match got close but we had a belief that in a couple of tight overs we could squeeze. In New Zealand, for the first time, there are different ground dimensions and had great results,” Shoaib Akhtar Said.
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