Kolkata: The Indian team put together another splendid performance and justified their tags of being the defending champions after they thrashed Bangladesh by a whopping 240-run margin in their second warm-up game in London on Tuesday.
Skipper Virat Kohli, Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh did not bat for India but when they started with their batting, they lost Rohit Sharma (1) and Ajinkya Rahane (11) with just 21 runs on the board. But Shikhar Dhawan (60) and comeback man Dinesh Karthik fought their way through and helped the innings gain momentum.
Dinesh Karthik who was drafted in as a late replacement for the injured Manish Pandey, played a solid and selfless innings of 94 runs before being retired hurt. But that wasn’t the end of the story. All-rounder Hardik Pandya then came to the party as he bludgeoned the Bangladeshi bowlers all round the park scoring 80 runs from just 54 balls to take India’s score to 324/7 in the first innings.
While Karthik and Pandya did it with the bat, pacers Umesh Yadav and Bhuvneshwar Kumar shone with the ball in hand as they produced spells of fiery bowling to bowl out Bangladesh for just 85 runs.
Both Umesh (3/16) and Bhuvneshwar (3/13) bowled brilliantly and never let the Bangladeshi batsmen settle as at one point of time, they had reduced them to 22/6. Only Mehedi Hasan (24) and Sunzamul Islam (18) provided some sort of a resistance but couldn’t deny the inevitable as India shot them out for a paltry 84 and made it to two wins in two warm up games going ahead into the tournament to play Pakistan on June 4. Mohammad Shami, Jasprit Bumrah, Ravichandran Ashwin and Hardik Pandya too got a wicket apiece.
Overall, the Indians would be looking forward to carrying on with the incredible momentum that they gained in these two warm up matches and definitely would be the team to beat, in the upcoming edition of the Champions Trophy.
Brief scores
India 324/7 (Dinesh Karthik 94, Hardik Pandya 80*; Rubel Hossain 3/50) beat Bangladesh 84 all out in 23.5 overs (Mehedi Hasan 24, Sunzamul Islam 18; Bhuvneshwar Kumar 3/13) by 240 runs.