A half century from Shikhar Dhawan on what proved to be a tricky surface at the Premadasa Stadium helped India to a six wicket win over Bangladesh in their T20I tri-series encounter.
Set a target of 140 runs to win in their 20 overs India were never really tested in their chase thanks to the steady runscoring of Dhawan.
Bangladesh couldn’t make the most of the starts they got in their effort at bat with Liton Das’ 34 the highest any Tiger’s batsman could manage.
Jaydev Unadkat (3/38) and Shardul Thakur (1/25) stuck early to remove the openers and from their Bangladesh struggled to find any rhythm in their batting.
The leg-spin of Yuzvendra Chahal proved tough to get away and the spinner ended up conceding just 19 runs in his four overs.
Sabbir Rahman (30) was unable to make the most of the 26 balls he was at the crease as the Tigers limped to a total of 139/8 in 20 overs.
Mustafizur Rahman and Rubel Hossain made some initial inroads in to the India batting with the former accounting for India skipper Rohit Sharma (17) while the latter castled Risabh Pant (7) to increase the pressure on the young man from whom much is expected.
But those early strikes weren’t enough to keep Dhawan from taking the game away from Bangladesh as he put on 68 for the third wicket with Suresh Raina (28).
Manish Pandey (27*) would be left to finish matters off when Dhawan nicked off to Taskin Ahmed with victory in sight.
