Kung Fu Pandya wins it again for India, and the Sydney jinx for visitors is broken. The T20 series is sealed by Kohli and co. and that too in style. The match began with India winning the toss and electing to bowl first, Chahal, Iyer and Thakur came in place of Jadeja, Manish and Shami while the Australian captain Finch was out of the match due to an injury and Matthew Wade led the side in his absence, Danial Sams made debut for Australia and replaced Mitchell Starc. Stoinis came back after being injured in place of Josh Hazelwood. Matthew Wade opened the innings and demolished the new ball bowlers of India, be it Chahar or Sundar. He gave a fiery start to Australia and completed his half century in just 25 balls with a strike rate of 200. His partner Darcy Short disappointed and got out early courtesy Natarajan. Comedy of error type moment came in the 8th over when Kohli dropped the catch of Matthew Wade but on the same delivery he got run out due to a miscommunication. He got out after scoring 58 runs. The innings was carried forward by Smith and Maxwell. Smith started of slow but quickly placed the foot on accelerator and targeted Chahal who was the star performer of previous match. Chahal was very expensive in his four overs and conceded more than 50 runs. Maxwell hit 2 sixes and got out to Thakur and his innings was a short lived one. Henriques joined Smith and played some cracking shots but the run rate got a little slower after a great start. Smith was departed by Chahal while Natarajan got the better of Henriques, the latter was the stand out performer in bowling and took 2 wickets in the whole match and gave only 20 runs in his quota. Stoinis and Sams played a short cameo in the last two overs which helped Australia to register a big total of 194. The Indian chase began with a bang, Rahul and Dhawan played spectacular shots, made great use of the powerplay and gave India the perfect start. Rahul got out to Tye when the score was 56 in 5.2 overs. After that Dhawan and Kohli took the responsibility of the chase on their shoulders and constructed the innings with singles and doubles and kept the required run rate under check. Dhawan scored his fifty and got out just after that. Samson joined Kohli in the middle and disappointed once again, he got a good start but threw his wicket by playing a loose shot. In came Hardik, the hero. He was quiet in the start and just supported Kohli who was replicating Ab De Villiers in his knock and played some unconventional shots which is not at all expected from a classic textbook batsman like Virat. He was departed on 40 by Sams the debutant in the 17th over. The situation was very tense, 37 runs in 3 overs. Iyer came in the middle and changed the momentum completely by hitting Zampa for a six and four in the 18th over. Pandya cashed in too by hitting two boundaries in the penultimate over. The equation came down to 14 of 6 balls. But when Pandya is there no need to fear. He slammed two sixes to Sams in the final over and won the match by 6 wickets for India with two balls to spare. A marvelous knock of 42* of 22 deliveries sealed the series for India with one match to go. Now the men in blue will aim to whitewash the hosts when they will meet again at SCG on Tuesday.
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