Washington Sundar played a vital innings at the back-end while Arshdeep Singh and Varun Chakravarthy excelled with the ball as India defeated Australia by five wickets to level the five-match T20I series 1-1, here on Sunday. Chasing a stiff 187-run target, Washington struck an unbeaten 49 off 23 deliveries as India won with nine balls to spare. After Australia scored a competitive 186/6 despite India left-arm pacer Arshdeep (3/35) and mystery spinner Chakravarthy (2/33) taking three and two wickets respectively, India were off to a confident start but kept losing wickets at regular intervals.
However, Tilak Varma (29 off 26 balls), Washington and Jitesh Sharma (22 runs off 13 balls) played handy knocks to take the visitors to victory.
Earlier, half-centuries from Tim David (74 off 38 balls) and Marcus Stoinis (64 runs off 39 balls) gave Australia a fighting total.
India pulled off the highest-successful T20I run chase at the Bellerive Oval at Hobart, surpassing Ireland's chase of 177 against Scotland during the T20 World Cup 2022.
Brief Scores:
Australia: 186 for 6 in 20 overs (Tim David 74, Marcus Stoinis 64; Arshdeep Singh 3/35, Varun Chakravarthy 2/33, Shivam Dube 1/43) vs India.
India: 188 for 5 in 18.3 overs (Abhishek Sharma 25, Tilak Varma 29, Washington Sundar 49 not out; Nathan Ellis 3/36).
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