India clinch T20 series against Australia with splendid bowling ...

The Indian men’s cricket team beat Australia by 20 runs in the fourth tie of the five-match T20 series at the Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh International Cricket Stadium in Raipur on Friday.

Put in to bat first, India rode on knocks by Rinku Singh and Yashasvi Jaiswal to put up 174/9 in their allotted 20 overs. Defending the modest total, Indian bowlers worked their magic to restrict the visitors to 154/7.

With the win, the Indian cricket team took an unassailable 3-1 lead in the five-match T20 series. India won the first two matches played in Thiruvananthapuram and Visakhapatnam but lost the third in Guwahati. The M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru will host the dead rubber on Sunday.

India have now registered the most wins in the history of T20 cricket. Their triumph over Australia was their 137th victory in the format, surpassing Pakistan’s tally. This was also the Indian cricket team’s third straight T20 series win against the Aussies.

Both teams made a host of changes to their respective starting line-ups heading into Friday’s fixture. While Mukesh Kumar, Deepak Chahar and Shreyas Iyer come in for Prasidh Krishna, Arshdeep Singh and Tilak Varma for India, the Aussies made five changes to the line-up which started in Guwahati.

Sent in to bat first after Suryakumar Yadav lost the toss, India made a solid start thanks to an early onslaught by the in-form Yashasvi Jaiswal (37 off 28). Aaron Hardie, however, dismissed Jaiswal with the final ball of the powerplay to end a 50-run partnership between India’s two openers.

Shreyas Iyer and Suryakumar Yadav spent little time out in the middle before being caught off Tanveer Sangha and Ben Dwarshuis, respectively, as India were reduced to 63/3.

A nifty 48-run partnership between Ruturaj Gaikwad and Rinku Singh (46 off 29) steadied the ship for India before Sangha sent Gaikwad (32 off 28) back to the pavilion. Jitesh Sharma then joined Rinku in the middle and upped the scoring rate.

The two took the score to 167 before Jitesh departed for 35 off 19. A quick succession of wickets prevented India from finishing their innings with a flurry as India’s innings wrapped up for 174/9.

Australia’s chase got off to a good start before Ravi Bishnoi disturbed Josh Philippe’s stumps to give India a much-needed breakthrough. Axar Patel gave further encouragement to the home crowd, picking up the dangerous Travis Head (31 off 16) and Aaron Hardie (8 off 9) to reduce the Aussies to 52/3.

Ben McDermott and Tim David did well to rebuild but Patel struck again to dismiss McDermott for 19 off 22 balls. Deepak Chahar then got into the action, sending back Tim David and Matthew Short in successive overs to put Australia in a serious state of bother.

Aussie captain Matthew Wade (36 off 23 balls) tried to pull off a late rescue act but it was a tad too late for the visitors, who fell short by 20 runs.

India vs Australia brief scores: India 174/9 in 20 overs (Rinku Singh 46, Yashasvi Jaiswal 37; Ben Dwarshuis 3/40; Jason Behrendorff 2/32) beat Australia 154/7 in 20 overs (Matthew Wade 36, Travis Head 31; Axar Patel 3/16) by 20 runs.