Akshar Patel and Shivam Dubey played important roles in Team India's victory.Image Credit source: PTI
Team India defeated Australia by 48 runs in the fourth T20 match. In this match played in Gold Coast, Team India defeated Australia with the help of the excellent performance of its 3 all-rounders and took a 2-1 lead in the series. With this, Team India also averted the danger of losing the series and has maintained its record of never losing a T20 series in Australia. Batting first, the Indian team scored 167 runs but the Australian team collapsed for only 119 runs. The stars of Team India's victory were all-rounders Shivam Dubey and Akshar Patel, who scored important runs and then destroyed the Australian top order.
Team India had come to play an international match for the first time at Carrara Oval in Gold Coast, but even this unknown place could not stop them from winning. Batting first, Team India scored 167 runs losing 8 wickets in 20 overs. Shubman Gill scored the maximum 46 runs for the team but his strike rate was only 117. Abhishek Sharma (28) also could not play a big and fast innings this time, while Shivam Dubey scored 22 runs in 18 balls.
Captain Suryakumar Yadav definitely scored a quick 20 runs in 10 balls but then he too was out, while Tilak Verma and Jitesh Sharma also did not work. But in the last overs, Akshar Patel (21) and Washington Sundar (12) scored some quick runs, with the help of which the Indian team was able to reach a strong score on this difficult pitch. For Australia, Nathan Ellis took 3 wickets for just 21 runs, while Adam Zampa also took 3 wickets.
Australia's start was similar to India's and its top order also scored runs at a decent pace. But Akshar Patel (2/20) and Shivam Dubey (2/20) gave big blows to the Australian team in between, which put brakes on its pace. Akshar gave the first two blows by taking the wickets of opener Matthew Short (25) and number three batsman Josh Inglis (12). But after this Dubey took the two biggest wickets. He first sent back Australian captain Mitchell Marsh (30) to the pavilion and then dismissed explosive batsman Tim David (14) cheaply.
From here it became difficult for Australia to return to the match. Australia lost the fourth wicket in the form of David at the score of 91 runs in the 12th over and then within the next 28 runs, its remaining 6 wickets also fell and the entire team collapsed for just 119 runs in 18.2 overs. In the end, Washington Sundar also played an important role in settling the Australian innings quickly by taking 3 wickets for 3 runs in his spell of just 8 balls.
