Shikhar Dhawan hits ton in Vizag, India win series against Sri Lanka 2-1
Visakhapatnam, Dec 17 (IBNS): Riding on Shikhar Dhawan's hundred, India scripted eight consecutive series win by defeating Sri Lanka in the third and final ODI here on Sunday.
Though India began the series disastrously, the men-in-blue was quick to get back to their shape to avoid a series loss.
Chasing a target of 216, India easily clinched the victory with almost 18 overs in hand. Dhawan remained not out at 100 while Shreyas Iyer scored yet another impressive knock of 65 runs.
Winning the toss, Indian captain Rohit Sharma chose to bowl and could restrict the visitors to only 215.
Despite some brilliant display of class batting up in the order by Upul Tharanga and Sadeera Samarawickrama, the Sri Lankan batting collapsed midway in front of the Indian bowlers.
At one stage, Sri Lanka were reigning at 160/3 but quickly lost the next seven wickets for just 54 runs, fading the efforts put by Tharanga and Samarawickrama, who scored 95 and 42 respectively.
Tharanga, though missed his century, went for 12 fours and 3 sixes, frustrating the Indian bowlers. Tharanga and Samarawickrama have put up a partnership of 121 runs for the second wicket.
Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav picked three wickets each for India. Hardik Pandya picked two while Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah shared a wicket each.
India lost their captain Rohit early but that did not hurt the hosts much as young Shreyas Iyer has once again showed his skill partnering Dhawan. The partnership between Dhawan and Iyer took the game completely away from the visitors.
Dhawan-Iyer duo have put up a partnership of 135 runs which weighed on the Lankans badly. Though Sri Lanka could manage to dismiss Iyer at 65, by then India have established their strong grip on the match eyeing on yet another series win.
The rest of the task was finished by Dinesh Karthik who remained unbeaten at unbeaten 26 (31), giving full support to Dhawan from the other end.
Sri Lanka tried a quite number of bowling options but it was captain Thisara Perera who dismissed Iyer. The other Indian wicket was clinched by Akila Dananjaya.
Sri Lanka's nightmare on Indian soil continues as they have earlier lost the Test series too.
India will next play a three-match T20 series against Sri Lanka before flying off to South Africa for a two-month long tour.
Image: twitter.com/ICC
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