Indian team celebrates Christmas with a whitewash and hats

On the Christmas eve, the Indian Cricket Team gave their fan a massive moment to celebrate as the Men in Blue beat Sri Lanka in the third and final T20I to claim the series 3-0. With the win, India now has whitewashed Sri Lanka in all formats in last 5 months time.

Rohit Sharma, India’s stand-in skipper for the first time in the series won the toss and opted to field first in what looked like a dewy evening. Earlier, India handed a debut to 18-year-old Washington Sundar in the place of Yuzvenra Chahal while Mohammed Siraj returned to the side in the place of Jasprit Bumrah. Injured Angelo Mathews was ruled out from the game when he got himself injured one more time during the 2nd T20I in Indore.

Sri Lankan openers yet again failed to give the team a good start as wicketkeeper-batsman Niroshan Deickwella became Jaydev Unadkat’s first victim. Regular wickets didn’t help their cause and they were left high and dry losing 3 wickets for 19 runs in the first four overs of the game.

Sadeera Samarwickrama and Asela Gunaratne for a brief period stopped the damage and put on a small partnership of 38 runs. Samarwickrama got out trying to up the ante when Dinesh Karthik pouched him at mid-off during Pandya’s second over. Sri Lanka lost wickets at the regular intervals as It looked that they might not go past 120 runs. But an 18-run over from Siraj helped Sri Lanka post 135 runs.

Shaky chase from India

In reply, last match’s centurion Rohit Sharma after a start failed to convert it into a big inning while Rahul too couldn’t emulate his form in the series thus far as Sri Lanka kept themselves in the hunt. Shreyas Iyer along with Manish Pandey steadied the ship for Team India with a slow partnership of 42 runs but both of them got out in quick successions.

Pandya who was promoted up the order for this game but couldn’t get going and fell for 4 runs trying to play an uppercut. MS Dhoni and Dinesh Karthik didn’t give Sri Lanka another wicket and guided the team to a victory in the last over of the game.

After the presentation ceremony, the Indian players celebrated the win in Christmas style as they came out with the hats on and while posing for the cameras. The ICC twitter handle too didn’t miss out the opportunity and posted the picture of Indian players with the hats on.

Here is the Tweet from the ICC:

India wearing their new hats for fielding ? pic.twitter.com/l2OEU0fJTS

— ICC (@ICC) December 24, 2017