Team India registered a thrilling six-run victory over Australia in the fifth and final T20I in Bangalore on Sunday (December 3) to clinch the series 4-1.

Invited to bat first, the hosts posted 160/8 in their allotted 20 overs on the back of Shreyas Iyer’s half-century (53 off 37 balls). Akshar Patel (31 off 21) and Jitesh Sharma (24 off 16) also played valuable cameos.

Ben Dwarshuis (2-30), Aaron Hardie (1-21) and Tanveer Sangha (1-26) returned with exceptional bowling figures for Australia.

Defending the total, Indian bowlers did well with the new ball to reduce the visitors to 55/3 after seven overs. While Mukesh Kumar dismissed Josh Philippe (4), Ravi Bishnoi got rid of Travis Head (28) and Aaron Hardie (6).

Ben McDermott resurrected the innings by adding 47 runs for the fourth wicket with Tim David (17), but the Aussies kept losing wickets at regular intervals once their partnership was broken by Akshar Patel.

Arshdeep Singh removed the dangerous-looking McDermott for 54 off 36 balls while Mukesh bagged the wickets of Matthew Short and Ben Dwarshuis in successive deliveries to leave the tourists reeling at 129/7 in 16.4 overs.

With 32 needed off the last three overs, skipper Matthew Wade smashed Avesh Khan for three consecutive boundaries and accumulated 15 runs from the 18th over. However, Mukesh bowled a fantastic penultimate over, conceding only 7 runs to finish with the figures of 3 for 32 in his four overs.

In the last over, Arshdeep was tasked to defend 10 runs and the left-arm pacer didn’t let his team down as he got the prized scalp of Wade (22 off 15) and gave away only three runs, restricting Australia to 154/8 in 20 overs.

For their stunning bowling performance in the death overs, Mukesh Kumar and Arshdeep Singh received rich praise from the cricket fraternity on social media platform X.

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