BRISBANE: At The Gabba on Monday, fifties from KL Rahul and Suryakumar Yadav helped India post a challenging 186/7 in their Ist warm-up match of ICC Men's T20 World Cup against defending champions Australia. For Australia, fast bowler Kane Richardson was the pick of the bowlers with 4/30 in his 4 overs.
Rahul was forced to bat first and was aggressive right away, hitting a pair of fours in the first two overs of Richardson and Mitchell Starc. The rest of his time at the crease, he pulled, flicked, and swivelled with ease.
In the next three balls of Pat Cummins' first over, he whacked him for a six and a four, and he later collected three fours and a six off Marcus Stoinis, who had already given up 20 runs in his opening over of the day. In the final over of the power play, Rahul reached his fifty with a flip off Glenn Maxwell over the midwicket fence.
Maxwell also gave Rohit Sharma a four and a six, but Australia made a quiet recovery as Rahul and the Indian captain both holed out to deep mid-wicket in consecutive overs. Before top-edging a pull from Starc to fine leg in his 13-ball 19, Virat Kohli played a beautiful innings. Hardik Pandya was only able to direct a slower bouncer from Richardson to the short third man.
As soon as he started, Suryakumar launched his signature inside-out loft over long-off and cut through the backward point, earning fours from Ashton Agar. He kept acting naturally, planning a sweep and plucking anything that was short or fast picking anything that was in his slot.
Suryakumar lobbed the ball right back to Richardson after lofting the ball over extra cover to achieve his fifty. While Ravichandran Ashwin got things going with a massive six before falling on the last ball of the innings, Dinesh Karthik helped him out brilliantly with a cameo of 20 off 14 balls.
Short scores: India 186/7 against Australia in 20 overs (KL Rahul 57, Suryakumar Yadav 50; Kane Richardson 4/30).
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