Indian pacer Shardul Thakur has been receiving praises from all corners after his terrific performance in the fourth T20I, which helped team India win the match and level the ongoing series against England to 2-2.
During the game, Shardul was asked to bowl the 17th over of the innings. At the stage, the England cricket team was 140-4 and Ben Stokes and Jonny Bairstow were once again giving a hard time to the Indian bowlers. However, Shardul turned the tables for India and brought the game back on track.
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Shardul picked 2 consecutive wickets of Stokes and skipper Eoin Morgan. Later, he picked the most difficult over of the day, i.e, the last over of the game, and defended 23 runs against Jofra Archer and stole the show as well as a memorable win for his team. Shardul ended the day with the figures of 3-42.
Later, after the match, Shardul Thakur revealed the magical advice of Rohit Sharma, who was the stand-in skipper of team India throughout that spell, which helped him deliver what he did. Shardul revealed that Rohit gave his bowlers some crucial pointers about the ground dimensions and simply asked them to back themselves. He said:
“Rohit said just back your instincts, think, take your time. He mentioned that one side of the ground is bigger and the other is short so plan your bowling and execute your balls [accordingly],”
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During the interaction, Shardul also talked about the difficult last over and how he where he gave 13 runs off the first three balls, however, bounced back to give away just 1 run of the remainder of the over. He revealed:
“There wasn’t much dew in the last three games but in this game, there was dew. So definitely a tough last over. They [England batsmen] were swinging hard and they were always going to go for runs. It was important to bowl those 1 or 2 dot balls and the game was sealed,”
“There was dew coming in so had we bowled the slower ones on the stumps or a little fuller then it would have been easier to hit. So the idea was to hit it into the pitch and keep it away from their power zone.”
