How Neville Madziva Trumped MS Dhoni
in Last-Ball Thriller
It was an outstanding last over from Neville Madziva but India have only themselves to blame for a shocking two-run loss against Zimbabwe in the first Twenty20 of the three-match series in Harare on Saturday.
India needed eight runs to win from the last over and MS Dhoni was at the crease but Madziva held his nerves and bowled with brilliant accuracy to give the Graeme Cremer-led side a sensational win against a team who have been in outstanding form in the shortest format in 2016.
It is a historic win considering that Zimbabwe had failed to qualify for the Super 10 of World Twenty20 and had lost T20 series to Afghanistan earlier this year.
Dhoni took a single off the first ball of the last over to give Axar Patel - who was looking good with the bat - the strike but he was caught by Hamilton Masakadza on the very next ball.
Dhoni once again was at the batting end but a spot-on Madziva didn’t let him go for a big hit and he took another single to give newcomer Rishi Dhawan the strike. He already had a bad day with the ball giving away 42 runs in his four overs and now he was under pressure to score six runs off last three balls.
As Dhawan went right across his stumps, Madziva bowled a wide delivery outside the off stump and it was a dot ball. The next delivery was almost similar and Dhawan tried the same shot but it was given as a wide ball by the umpire.
Dhawan took a single off the next delivery, which meant that India needed a boundary off the last ball and ‘Captain Cool’ this time failed to score the winning runs and the ball outside the off stump was played to backward point for a single.