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India beats Namibia in Kohli’s last game as T20 skipper
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ndia hammered Namibia by nine wickets to give Virat Kohli a winning farewell in his last match as Twenty20 captain and finish its disappointing ICC Men’s T20 World Cup campaign on a high on Monday.
India, who bowed out of the tournament on Sunday, rode on an 87-run opening stand between Rohit Sharma, who hit 56, and KL Rahul, who made an unbeaten 54, to reach its target of 133 in 15.2 overs in Dubai.
India, the 2007 champion, finished the tournament with three wins from five Super 12 matches but missed out on the semifinals. Namibia signed off with a single win in its first appearance in the Super 12 stage of the T20 World Cup.
Indian spinners Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin took three wickets each to set up the victory after they kept Namibia to 132 for eight. David Wiese scored 26 off 25 balls and lifted Namibia from a precarious 94-7 to a respectable total, but it was not enough to challenge a powerful Indian batting line-up, which came good toward the business end of the tournament.
Rohit, who remains the frontrunner to take over the T20 duties from Kohli, hit his second half-century of the competition. Rohit finally fell to Jan Frylinck's left-arm medium pace but only after he smashed seven fours and two sixes in his 37-ball knock.
Rahul kept up the pace to make his third consecutive fifty and struck the winning boundary.
Suryakumar Yadav hit an unbeaten 25 off 19 balls.
India had only managed to post 151 and 110 in its opening two losses against Pakistan and New Zealand that dented its chances of making the semifinals.
New Zealand beat Afghanistan on Sunday to eliminate India from the competition and join Pakistan as the teams going into the final four from Group 2.
In the final Super 12 match, the Indian bowlers took control after pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah sent back Michael van Lingen for 14 to end a 33-run opening stand. Jadeja struck three times with his left-arm spin, and off-spinner Ashwin also rattled the Namibian middle and lower order with figures of 3-20.
Wiese put on 23 for the eighth wicket with Frylinck, who made an unbeaten 15, to add useful runs in the final few overs. Number 10 Ruben Trumpelmann made 13 from six balls, including a six and a four in the 20th over from Mohammed Shami, but Namibia's total was not enough.
Kohli said it had been an "honor" to captain India's Twenty20 side as he ended an otherwise disappointing World Cup campaign on a winning note.
Kohli, who will continue to captain India in Test and one-day international (ODI) cricket, took over the T20 captaincy from MS Dhoni in 2017 and said it was time to manage the workload.
"It's been an honor, but things have to be kept in the right perspective. This was the right time for me to manage my workload," Kohli said. "It's been six-seven years of intense cricket every time we take the field and it takes a lot out of you."
He has led the team to great heights in Test and white-ball cricket but critics have always pointed at his failure to land a World Cup triumph in either T20 or ODI cricket.
Earlier this year, India was also beaten by New Zealand in the first-ever World Test Championship final. The superstar batsman said his deputy Rohit Sharma had been overseeing matters going into the game.
