Unlike earlier matches, Abhishek neither charged at the quick bowlers nor gave away his stumps. It took him only three balls to unveil an inside-out drive over extra cover for four. It turned out to be a no-ball as well, and he sent the free hit for a straight four. Abhishek got to 33 off 13 in the powerplay as Zimbabwe refrained from using spin before the field spread out.

As soon as the powerplay ended, Sikandar Raza and Brian Bennett bowled two overs without a boundary to Abhishek and Ishan Kishan. Neither of them panicked, Ishan used power, Abhishek his feet, and both got past the hurdle.

It took only his 26 balls but Abhishek’s maiden World Cup fifty was the second-slowest of his 11 scores of 50 or above in T20Is.

Dropped catches hurt Zimbabwe

Had Zimbabwe held on two pretty straightforward chances, Kishan would have been dismissed for 26 off 19 and Suryakumar for eight off four. The duo ended up with 38 off 24 and 33 off 13. The innings was set up beautifully for Hardik Pandya and Tilak Varma to finish off.

The finishing kick

Hardik Pandya and Tilak Varma added an unbeaten 84 off 31 balls, hitting four sixes each, almost racing each other. Hardik was the only one that ended up with a fifty, but he had a headstart of 12 runs when Tilak came out to bat. Tilak was the quicker one, striking cleanly from the first ball, using space both in front of and behind square. Hardik mainly used power to go down the ground, and caught up with and went past Tilak with two sixes off the last two balls of the innings.

Early movement makes it a bridge too far for Zimbabwe

Arshdeep Singh conceded just one boundary in his first two overs, Hardik extracted appreciable seam movement with the new ball, and at 25 for 0 in four overs, Zimbabwe were looking at 14.5 per over to stay alive in the tournament.

Spinners strike

Axar Patel, left out for the last match because of an abundance of left-hand batters, took two balls to get a wicket, that of the left-hand batter Tadiwanashe Marumani. Varun Chakravarthy took to 19 his streak of taking at least one wicket in a T20I with the wicket of Dion Myers.

Bennett shines, cause for concern for India

In the end, India were comfortable victors by 72 runs, but they will not like that Varun went for 35 runs, conceding three sixes, and that their sixth bowler Shivam Dube had a terrible night out with 46 off two overs. Thanks to South Africa’s win over West Indies earlier in the day, India were under no pressure to secure a big win so they did experiment more than they usually would have.

Zimbabwe ended up getting 184 thanks largely to Bennett, who showed he had a higher gear in him after he went the first round scoring in the 130s without a single six. Here he hit six sixes and scored at 164.4. As the hundred approached, though, Arshdeep shut Zimbabwe out with three wickets in two overs, which also meant Bennett was starved of strike in the end. Arshdeep went past Jasprit Bumrah as India’s leading wicket-taker in T20 World Cups.

Brief scores:
India 256 for 4 in 20 overs (Sanju Samson 24, Abhishek Sharma 55, Ishan Kishan 38, Suryakumar Yadav 33, Hardik Pandya  50*, Tilak Varma 44*; Richard Ngarava 1-62, Blessing Muzarabani 1-42, Tinotenda Maposa 1-40, Sikandar Raza 1-29) beat Zimbabwe 184 for 6 in 20 overs (Brian Bennett 97*, Tadiwanashe Marumani 20, Sikandar Raza 31, Tony Munyonga 11;  Arshdeep Singh 3-24, Varun Chakravarthy 1-35, Axar Patel 1-35, Shivam Dube 1-46) by 72 runs

[Cricinfo]