Harare: Amit Mishra's superb bowling coupled with Virat Kohli's unbeaten 68 steered India to yet another win against Zimbabwe in the third ODI that was played at Harare on Sunday.
Chasing a meagre target of 184 to win, India again faltered in their start as Rohit Sharma lost his wicket to a widish delivery after scoring just 14 runs. Shikhar Dhawan scored some crisp boundaries before he departed contributing 35 runs to the team’s total.
But Ambati Rayudu played well alongside Kohli to knit a partnership of 64 runs, which got India out of the rough phase. Rayudu and Kohli took their time as there was hardly any pressure of run-rate or chasing of big total. They kept knocking the ball for ones and twos which were later coupled with some odd boundaries to take India past 100 run mark. Rayudu lost his wicket to Brian Vitori and departed after scoring hard-fought 33 runs. Raina came to the middle and started smacking the boundaries. Meanwhile, Kohli reached his 50 off 80 balls as he smacked a crisp four through covers.
The duo added 56 runs in just 32 balls to finish off the match in 35.3 overs and with seven wickets intact.
Earlier in the day, it was some brilliant bowling from Vinay Kumar and Shami Ahmed which gave Indi an ideal start, as they removed the Zimbabwean openers in first seven balls of the match. Brendon Taylor did try to steady the ship with Hamilton Masakadza as he added 65 runs for the third wicket but was dismissed by Jaydev Unadkat.
After that it was the spin web casted by Amit Mishra who trapped Masakadza and Waller in successive deliveries and reduced them to 5/80. Soon their in-form batsman Elton Chigumbura was deceived by the incoming delivery from Ravindra Jadeja.
Meanwhile, Sean Williams kept fighting hard against the Indian spinners as he kept rotating the strikes with few boundaries but couldn’t keep his wicket for long and was run-out at the score of 45. It was some late resistance from Vitori and Chatara which took them past 150 runs mark. Mishra dismissed both these batsmen with his brilliant googly and ended up picking four wickets in this match and was later adjudged man-of-the-Match for his outstanding performance.