The Indian cricket team will have an added motivation to go for a whitewash in the third and final T20I against Sri Lanka as a win for them in Mumbai will help them to reach to the no.2 position in ICC T20I Rankings.
The hosts recorded comprehensive victories in the first and second T20I, winning by huge margins of 93 and 88 runs respectively and they will be looking forward to putting on a similar performance at the Wankhede Stadium — the home of in-form skipper Rohit Sharma.
India (119) are currently ranked fourth in the list with only Pakistan (124), West Indies (120) and New Zealand (120) ahead of them in terms of rating. However, if the ‘Men in Blue’ go on to win this clash, they will take the second spot with 120 points and that will be a tie with two other teams.
However, if Sri Lanka somehow manages to defeat India, then the hosts will drop down to fifth in the rankings as they will lose two rating points and England will take the fourth spot in the list with 117 points.
As for the visitors, they are currently ranked at number eight in the world in T20Is and with form and odds firmly against them, few would expect them to cause an upset in this clash.
On the Yuzvendra Chahal has been one of the pick of the bowlers for India in limited-over formats for quite some time now and he will be looking to overtake Ravichandran Ashwin’s record, as the Men In Blue lock horns against Sri Lanka in the third T20I in Mumbai on Sunday.
So far, Chahal has scalped four wickets in both Cuttack and Indore T20Is. Because of his exploits in the first match, Chahal became the leading wicket-taker of 2017, while he added four more to his tally in the next match to firmly cement his place at the top.
The young leggie needs just one more wicket to overtake Ashwin as the Indian spinner with the most number of T20I wickets in a calendar year. Ashwin scalped 23 wickets in 2016, the same as Chahal this year. While, if Chahal manages to scalp two, then he will overtake Ashwin and become the most prolific Indian spinner in a single bilateral T20I series. (Ashwin took 9/35 v SL in 2016, whilst Chahal has taken 8/75 this series, with one match to go).
Three wickets for Chahal in this clash will see him overtake Saeed Ajmal’s record of 25 T20I wickets in a single calendar year (in 2012), the current most by any spinner. And looking at his form, few would bet against the tweaker not going past these mark against the out-of-sorts Sri Lankan batting line-up.
