Absolutely
sensational bating display – India chased down 209 – won by 7 wickets in
hand with 28 balls to spare!
Suryakumar Yadav won the toss and opted to bowl in the second T20I in Raipur, with dew having already begun setting in. For the same reason, New Zealand too wanted to bowl first. India made two changes to their XI. Axar Patel, who hurt his finger during the first T20I in Nagpur, was a forced absentee, while Jasprit Bumrah was rested. In came Kuldeep Yadav and Harshit Rana. New Zealand made three changes. Tim Seifert came in for Tim Robinson, Zak Foulkes for Kristian Clarke, and Matt Henry for Kyle Jamieson.
This is India's 100th T20I at home but only the second ever in Raipur. For someone who grew up seeing India losing matches badly and a time when a score of 220+ in 50 overs Cricket was considered winnable !! – those were the days when asking rate of 6 – say 20 in last 3 overs were considered near improbable.
Today at Raipur, India needed 209 and lost their openers with just 6 runs on the board – rest is history, forgettable for some as Zak Foulkes who ended up giving 67 runs in his 3 overs !!
India won with ridiculous ease, mainly because of that great innings of 21 ball 50 (786 off 32 with 4 sixers) by comeback man Ishan Kishan and 37 ball 82 by Suryakumar Yadav – some mighty hits by Shivam Dube hastened the finish. First there was partnership of 122 in 8 overs between Ishan and Surya and another unbeaten partnership of 81 sealed the victory.
Today’s match was played in the city of Raipur, the capital of State of Chattisgarh. It was formerly a part of Madhya Pradesh before the state of Chhattisgarh was formed on November 1, 2000. Raipur is located near the centre of a large plain, sometimes referred as the "rice bowl of India", where hundreds of varieties of rice are grown. The Mahanadi River flows to the east of the city of Raipur, and the southern side has dense forests. The district was once part of southern Kosal and considered to be under Mourya Kingdom. Raipur city had been the capital of the Haihaya Dynasty Kalchuri kings, controlling the traditional forts of the Chhattisgarh for a long time. Satawahana kings ruled this part till the 2nd–3rd century. In the 4th century AD the king Samudragupta conquered this region.
More than Cricket, this place has its connection to Indian freedom struggle ~ the rising of 1857 marked the beginning of the country's struggle for freedom after a century of uninterrupted foreign domination. The country witnessed a popular upsurge of deep-seated and widespread bitterness against the alien rulers. The East India Company's Government was swept from large parts of North India and the very foundations of British rule were shaken. It appeared for some time that the Company's Raj had disappeared from the land.
Narayan Singh Binjhwar, the scion of the Zamindar family of Sonakhan in Chhattisgarh, was born in 1795. During a severe famine, in 1856, he helped the people to save them from starvation. He was falsely implicated and arrested in October, 1856. When the flames of 1857 war reached Chhatisgarh, the masses elected the imprisoned Narayan Singh as their leader and liberated him from the jail. After organising the local people, Narayan Singh had an encounter with the British army near Sonakhan. Moved by the atrocities of the British and the resultant devastation and destruction, Narayan Singh surrendered to the British to protect the lives of his people. His public execution on 10 December 1857 provoked the public and the army contingent at Ranipur, which rose in yet another revolt. Veer Narayan Singh's martyrdom was a memorable event in the history of Chhattisgarh and lent momentum to the freedom struggle ~ and the stadium is named after that martyr as ‘Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh Stadium’.
23.1.2026
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