Former Indian cricketer Virender Sehwag lauded Team India for showing ‘positive intent’ in the third match of the ICC T20 World Cup 2021 against Afghanistan in Abu Dhabi.
After being bogged down in the first two matches of the T20 World Cup, Team India staged a dominant comeback and thumped Afghanistan by 66 runs to keep their hopes alive for the semi-finals.
Batting first, Indian openers Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul took India off to a flyer and smashed Afghanistan bowlers all over the park for their 140-run opening wicket partnership.
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While the Indian vice-captain played a knock of 74 runs, KL Rahul went back to the dressing room after scoring a well-compiled 69 runs.
After both the openers went back to the dressing room, the duo of Rishabh Pant and Hardik Pandya made sure that momentum doesn’t shift towards Afghanistan, stitching an unbeaten 67 runs partnership in just 21 balls to help their team post a mammoth total of 210 runs on the board, highest of the tournament so far.
While defending the target, the duo of Mohammad Shami and R Ashwin combined to pick 5 wickets and helped their team restrict Afghanistan to a total of 144 runs and win the match by 66 runs.
Talking to Cricbuzz, Virender Sehwag lauded Team India for showing positive intent in both batting and bowling.
"I think when things fall your way, the body language automatically changes... Today, we were playing against a team where we could have picked ourselves up had the body language been down. There was positive intent in both batting and bowling. Fielding was really good and our team took really good catches", Virender Sehwag said.
Sehwag urged Team India to play with similar positive intent against the bigger opponents. He said that even if they lose they should go down fighting and not surrender.
"The similar positive body language that we saw today should also be kept while playing against big teams even if we lose... We should go down fighting, and not surrender," he said.
India will play Scotland in their next T20 World Cup clash on 5th November in Dubai. They need to win both their remaining matches by healthy margins to have a chance to qualify for the semi-finals and would also want either Namibia or Afghanistan to beat New Zealand.
(Cricbuzz inputs)
