Team India registered a dominant win in the second T20 international against New Zealand at Bay Oval. Suryakumar Yadav’s brilliance with the bat, capped with clinical bowling performance from Deepak Hooda, Yuzvendra Chahal and Md. Siraj sealed the game for visitors.
While chasing 196, New Zealand batters failed big time as they were bundled out for 126 in 18.5 overs. Minutes after Team India registered convincing win on Sunday, former Indian off-spinner Harbhajan Sing took a sly sig at the team management underlining Yuzvendra Chahal’s performance.
Chahal picked two wickets in his four overs spell and conceded 24 runs. He bowled with an economy of 6.50. “Great to see @yuzi_chahal winning games with ball. Wish we played him during the (T20 world) last week in Australia,” read Harbhajan Singh’s tweet.
Notably, Yuzvendra Chahal didn’t play a single match during T20 World Cup in Australia. His is exclusion from the squad raised lot of question on the team management. Notably, Chahal is India’s second-leading wicket-taker in the shortest format of the game. The 32-year-old has 85 wickets to his name in 69 matches. Despite his instrumental performance in the format, Chahal was ignored by the management in the highly anticipated ICC tournament.
Interestingly, Chahal had a similar fate during T20 World Cup 2021 in UAE. However, veteran batter and prolific finisher Dinesh Karthik recently revealed that Yuzvendra Chahal and Harshal Patel were informed by the management that they will only be included in the squad if the conditions allow.
“At the start of the tournament, they were told that under these conditions, we would be playing you; otherwise, it might be difficult. So, they were very well aware and were preparing in such a way that when they get opportunity, they would try and do their best, but there might be a chance that they ended up not playing."