During the fourth match of the Nidahas Trophy between Sri Lanka and India at Colombo, Indian medium-fast bowler Shardul Thakur registered his career-best T20I figures. From drawing the first blood to bowling well in the death overs, Thakur played the dual role in his during his sensational spell.

Thakur’s spell proved his captain Rohit Sharma‘s decision of winning the toss and opting to field as the right decision as India restricted Sri Lanka for 152-9 in 19 overs. Thakur was first introduced into the attack by Rohit Sharma in the third over.

In which was not the best of ways to start an over during a power play, Thakur bowled a wide delivery down the leg side. However, he picked up the wicket of Danushka Gunathilaka on his first legal delivery via an acrobatic Suresh Raina catch at mid-wicket.

Just when Sri Lanka was running away with their innings during the middle overs, Thakur’s knuckleball got the better of the danger man in Thisara Perera. The dynamic all-rounder was in the middle of a brilliant cameo when he mistimes a Thakur delivery to Yuzvendra Chahal at the cover region.

He then bowled the third last over of the Sri Lankan innings, giving away only seven runs. Bowling the last over, he restricted the Sri Lankan batsman to six runs and additionally picked up a couple of overs to wind up the innings.

On the third ball of the innings, Dasun Shanaka’s attempt to slog landed safely into the hands of Dinesh Karthik behind the wicket. On the following delivery, Dushmantha Chameera sliced his first ball to third-man where Jaydev Unadkat got hold of an impressive catch. Thakur might have missed a hat-trick on the last ball of the over, but had done his work till then.

In the absence of Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah, Shardul Thakur is doing a job which is likely to hand him a permanent role in this team.