It was 30 needed off 30 balls again and India still pulled it off and like at the T20 World Cup final a month ago, Suryakumar Yadav was one of their heroes. Only this time he did it as bowler of the 20th over, where he defended five runs by picking up two wickets.
Sri Lanka's batting has been extremely brittle in this T20I series. They collapsed three times in three games - 9 for 30, then 7 for 31 and finally 7 for 22. Tuesday's debacle would hurt particularly badly because they lost two wickets to Rinku Singh in the 19th over. He had only ever bowled 60 deliveries in his entire T20 career, which began way back in 2014. And two more wickets fell with the captain taking the ball. He'd only bowled twice in the last five years across first-class, List A and T20 cricket.
Suryakumar's inventiveness as captain - trusting two brand new bowlers to bowl the last two overs - pushed the game into a Super Over, where he hit the winning runs. At the presentation, he said he fully believed the win was possible even though India had only 137 on the board.
"More than the last over, I feel when we were around 30 for 4 and 48 for 5, how the boys showed character in the middle and took the game away from them, I felt 140 was par score on that track and the way they batted. When we were going in during our fielding sessions, I told them I had seen such kinds of games. I think if we put our heart in for one, one-and-a-half hours we can pull it off."
All three games offered spin-friendly conditions which Suryakumar might have factored into his calculations because his bowling the 20th over was far from the plan.
"It was fun," Riyan Parag said, "And that's why actually we didn't feel the nerves. We planned it in such a fun way, it was very spontaneous, Rinku bhai bowling the 19th over. I was pretty sure Siraj bhai was going to bowl the last over but then Surya bhai just came on to bowl and got it to a Super Over. So I think everyone was pretty chill. We were having fun. That's one of our motto as well. We are being ruthless but we have fun and enjoy the game and that's why we were able to pull this off today."
The specialist bowlers did their job too. Washington Sundar took two wickets in two balls in the 17th over, dismissing the Sri Lanka captain Charith Asalanka and their premier allrounder Wanindu Hasaranga to create chaos in the chase. Then he fronted up for the Super Over and took two wickets in two balls there as well.
"I guess all work I've done, and a lot of blessings from God definitely helped me," Washington said. "I just wanted to try and stay calm and just focus on what I'm supposed to do and very grateful to Surya especially to throw the ball to me in that [Super Over] situation.
"We did a bit of homework against their batsmen. Obviously, there was a little bit of purchase in the wicket as well, so I didn't really have to do too much. I just had to hit the right lengths often. The rest was there."
Suryakumar's willingness to try unorthodox things was on show even in previous games, when he turned to Parag's part-time spin to bowl in the death overs in previous games. Parag is actually India's second most used bowler of the series (9.2 overs), behind only Ravi Bishnoi (12 overs). He was particularly pleased with the way his legbreaks are coming out.
"I've been working on it," Parag said. "Its taken some time. I've tried it out in domestic games. I had a few net sessions prior to the tournament and it was coming out pretty well. I just expressed myself. Surya bhai said just go for it. I bowled it with a free hand and it turned out pretty well."
Parag's plan in the third T20I, where he bowled four overs for 27 runs was simple. "It's always easy to get carried away when its turning so much so the goal and the ideology behind todays' bowling was to keep it stump to stump, get a lot of revs behind the ball and the wicket was helping so I didn't really have to do much. I just had to hit the right areas. And then Rinku bhai and Surya at the end [laughs]"
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