In their last group game India defeated Namibia easily and although the result was inconsequential India finished their tournament on a high.

Game 30

India 136 for 1 (Rohit 56, Rahul 54*) beat Namibia 132 for 8 (Wiese 26, Jadeja 3/16, Ashwin 3/20) by 9 wickets.

This was Virat Kohli’s last match as captain of India’s T20 team. There is also talk in the media that the Indian selectors may free him off the ODI captaincy too. Rohit Sharma is expected to be India’s white ball captain moving forward and Virat will lead the side in red ball cricket. This was also Ravi Shastri’s last assignment as the coach of India so the Indian team definitely wanted to give both captain and coach a winning farewell.

India won the toss and elected to field first as per the norm in Dubai. Like in the game against Scotland their bowlers once again did a splendid job of restricting the run scoring while picking up regular wickets. Spinners Ravindra Jadeja (man of the match) and Ravichandran Ashwin bowled 8 overs between them and picked up 6 wickets for 36 runs. Paceman Jasprit Bumrah as usual chipped in with 2 wickets for 19 runs from his 4 overs. For the Namibian’s there was some resistance at the beginning from Stephen Baard (21 of 21 balls) and at the end from the consistent David Wiese (26 of 25 balls) but apart from that there were no other significant contributions. Namibia finished with a below par 132 for 8 from their 20 overs.

The Indian openers once again began the run chase in swashbuckling fashion. Rohit Sharma (56 of 37 balls) lived a charmed life. He was dropped at short fine leg in the first over and a couple of his mistimed shots fell short of the fielders or in no man’s land. But in between all the lucky breaks he played some glorious shots to ensure that India cruised to the target smoothly. He was matched stroke for stroke by his partner at the other end KL Rahul (54 of 36 balls) who began slowly but easily managed to match Rohit’s strike rate by the end of the innings. When Rohit departed Kohli promoted new team member Suryakumar Yadav ahead of himself to give him some valuable time in the middle and gain World Cup experience. Rahul and Yadav finished the game in the 16^th over to ensure another big win for India.

The Indian team has been away from home since June this year playing first in the World Test Championship final, then the test series against England, then the IPL and now the T20 World Cup. The players will be happy to head home after being on the road for five months but not for long as their next series against New Zealand starts on the 17^th of this month.

Fixtures

Semifinals: Wednesday 4am England-New Zealand, Thursday 4am Pakistan-Australia (CKT).