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India succumb to spin as Sri Lanka seal T20I series

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Sri Lanka’s victory had a great amount of significance as they recorded a T20I series win after five unsuccessful attempts and also brought an end to India’s eight-series winning streak in this format.

But it was Man-of-the-Match Hasaranga who stole the limelight as the dynamic leg-spinner celebrated his 24th birthday in style by returning outstanding figures of four wickets for just nine runs from his quota of four overs as India struggled to reach 81 for eight having elected to bat first.

Hasaranga was all over the Indian batsmen as he produced a mixture of spin and guile to send the opposition reeling to their third lowest score in T20 Internationals.

In fact, at one stage it looked as if India would struggle to get past their lowest T20I score of 74, which they made against Australia in 2008 at Melbourne.

However, two useful contributions from Bhuvneshwar Kumar (16) and Kuldeep Yadav (23 n.o) ensured that India would avoid that humiliation and bat through the entire 20 overs.

Hasaranga was well backed up by Skipper Dasun Shanaka and Dushmantha Chameera, who in fact triggered the Indian batting collapse by removing Skipper Shikhar Dhawan for a first-ball duck.

Sri Lanka then went on to add the finishing touches convincingly as they reached the victory target with five overs to spare.

Leg-spinner Rahul Chahar was the only bowler to cause some trouble to the Sri Lankan batsmen as he had the credit of claiming all three wickets of the innings.

Openers Avishka Fernando and Minod Bhanuka got the Sri Lankan innings off to a decent start before Dananjaya de Silva completed the rout with an unbeaten 23.

India succumb to spin as Sri Lanka seal T20I series

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