‘I’m gonna take this guy down’ – Ishan Kishan on attacking Australian bowler Tanveer Sangha in 1st T20 of Australia’s tour of India

India recently defeated Australia by two wickets in the first T-20 game of Australia’s tour of India. The much-awaited victory came immediately a few days after Australia defeated India by six wickets in the final match of the ODI World Cup 2023 to lift their sixth ODI World Cup title. 

Australia gave a mammoth target of 208 runs in 20 overs to India, and the latter successfully achieved the highest target in T20I history and 19.5 overs after the loss of eight wickets. Ishan Kishan and Suryakumar Yadav scored 58 and 80 runs respectively to lead India towards the victory. 

After the game, the wicket-keeper batsman Ishan Kishan talked about the Australian bowler he wanted to target to score boundaries (a couple of sixes and a four) and told the captain about the same. 

Ishan said, “I had a chat with Surya bhai. ‘I’m gonna take this guy (down) wherever he bowls because we need to close the gap between runs and balls. You can’t leave too many runs for the batters at the back. It won’t be easy for them to play the big shots straight away. I had to take my chances and I believed in myself.” 

Suryakumar Yadav on winning the first game as an Indian captain 

In the postmatch ceremony after winning the first T-20 of the series, the captain Suryakumar Yadav said, “I think bowlers did a great job, we were put under pressure, but credit to Mukesh for the way he bowled, the wicket wasn’t easy to bowl on, but to go at less then 9 rpo was outstanding, Rinku as well, playing at the early stage of his career and playing that kind of innings, it was special.” Yadav further said, “We didn’t want to put too much pressure on the later batters, credit to Surya bhai, he planned his innings superbly, he can always play the big shots whenever needed. The plan was to get quick runs (on the partnership), so even if I got out, we needed the runs on the board.”

“The ball I got out, he wanted me to look for a single, but the gap between runs required and balls left was big and I had to go for my shots. It’s a young side, most of them have not played against big teams like this, we’ll make mistakes, we’ll talk about it during the team meetings and come back better with the ball in the next match”, he added.