BENGALURU: Shreyas Iyer's hard-fought half-century and Axar Patel's cameo propelled India to a score of 160/8 against Australia in the final T20I on Sunday at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium here. India got off to a flying start with Yashasvi Jaiswal leading the charge with the bat for Men in Blue in the powerplay.
His quick-fire 21 off 15 balls in overcast conditions came to an end at the hands of Jason Behrendorff. Ruturaj Gaikwad followed in the footsteps of Jaiswal in the next over by Ben Dwarshuis. The right-handed batter once again took his time to settle on the pitch but failed to accelerate and went back after scoring 10(12).
Wickets continued to tumble in the middle overs while Shreyas Iyer stuck onto his end. Unlike the previous games Rinku Singh was ineffective in the middle and departed after scoring 6 off 8 balls. Jitesh Sharma (24 off 16 balls) came in and played his usual style of play. Before walking back to the pavilion he struck three boundaries and a maximum.
Axar Patel spent some time on the pitch with Shreyas and stitched up a 46-run partnership. Behrendorff got the better of Patel and ended his counter-attacking knock of 31 off 21 balls.
The stage was set for Shreyas (53) to finish off the innings in style for India but he got undone by Nathan Ellis's yorker which was bowled at a speed of 140 kmph. Ravi Bishnoi and Arshdeep Singh stole a couple of singles at the end to propel India to a score of 160/8.
Brief Score: India 160/8 (Shreyas Iyer 53, Axar Patel 31; Ben Dwarshuis 2-30) vs Australia.