Rashid Khan bowls his first impactful spell versus India

Rashid Khan in T20Is against India before: 8 overs, 0 wickets

Rashid Khan against India today: 4 overs, 3 wickets

It is surprising that Rashid Khan, one of the ace spinners in T20 cricket, hadn’t taken a wicket against India in T20Is before. Yes, he had played only two matches before but we are so used to seeing Rashid create an impact in this format that even his economy rate in those matches (8.6) makes you look at the numbers on your screen twice. 

On Thursday (June 20), Rashid mended his numbers vs India, pegging the Men in Blue back with figures of 3/26 in his four overs, thus creating an impact in terms of both wickets and economy. 

On a slow pitch in Barbados, India had a decent start or was just getting into the mode of upping the ante. Rishabh Pant scored three consecutive boundaries against Mohammad Nabi in the sixth over, taking India’s score to 47/1 in the powerplay. 

Rashid brought himself to bowl in the seventh over as he usually does. It was clear that Pant wanted to take him on, too. The left-hander’s default method of attack lies in playing audacious lap shots, trying to pick the ball up off a length. However, it is not always the best option against a spinner of a flatter and quicker trajectory like Rashid. 

As Pant must have understood, Rashid sneaked the ball under Pant’s premeditated bat swing to nail him lbw on the last ball of his first over. 

In the next over, Rashid had Virat Kohli in his pocket. Kohli generally has had the wood over Rashid. Before this fixture, the 35-year-old had scored 104 runs against Rashid off 79 balls, losing his wicket only twice across nine innings. Here, Rashid won the contest for the third time. 

Kohli’s eagerness to get on top of the bowler, something he may have picked from a high-scoring Indian Premier League (IPL) season preceding this World Cup, took him down. Lofting the ball in search of a six, Kohli found the fielder in the deep. 

Two wickets in four balls for the Afghanistan captain. India slipped from 47/1 in six overs to 67/3 in nine. 

Shivam Dube at the crease, then. 

A lot was expected from him with India’s caravan moving from the challenging, fast-bowling-friendly pitches in the United States to better batting and slow-bowling-friendly conditions in the Caribbean. Right up Dube’s alley regarding the conditions and the Afghan bowling attack. 

Dube is a beast of a hitter against spin. However, he doesn’t have the best defence. Rashid opened him up on that front with a leg break that didn’t turn. Dube expected the ball to go across him but was struck on the back leg to be adjudged lbw. 

2.5-0-21-3 for Rashid. India 90/4 in 10.5 overs and only 43/3 since the powerplay. 

Suryakumar Yadav (53 off 28 balls) was the only batter who could score runs against the wily wrist-spinner. He swept Rashid as much as possible. The difference from Pant was that instead of getting under the ball to loft it, Surya focussed on hitting the ball with the full face of the bat. 14 of Surya’s 16 runs against Rashid came from a variety of sweep strokes. 

Rashid held himself back for his last over. Hardik Pandya was keen on seeing him through when he returned in the 14th over of India’s innings. He happily played four dots, but a loose ball from Rashid to finish his spell, one of the few he bowled in the innings, granted him a boundary and raised Rashid’s economy above 6 runs per over. 

Post Rashid, India hammered 66 runs in the remaining six overs. India sailed to a total of 181. But as Babar Azam stated before Pakistan’s exit from the tournament, one player cannot do the role of the other 10 players. And Rashid had done his job with his first impactful spell against India. 

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