India pacer Rohit Sharma repeated his semi-final act again, as he dropped New Zealand batter Rachin Ravindra on his own bowling during the Champions Trophy final on Sunday. Rachin hit the ball straight at Shami in the 7th over, prompting a reflexive attempt from the India pacer but was granted with a lifeline. Shami attempted to put both his hands behind the ball but the ball slipped though his hands as the batter completed a single. The veteran pacer’s inability to grab an important wicket left skipper Rohit Sharma fuming in the middle.
Rachin got New Zealand off to a fine start, scoring 28 off 20 balls before the incident took place. Shami even had to seek assistance from the medical team after the incident.
Shami dropped catch of rachin ravindra #INDvsNZ #ChampionsTrophy2025pic.twitter.com/RqWPkLXtLe
— JAIU (@Jaideepptdr) March 9, 2025
The New Zealand batter continued to have an eventful outing shortly after Shami’s over. He was given out caught behind on the bowling of Varun Chakravarthy but he used DRS to get the third umpire to overturn the decision. Just one delivery later, Rachin looked to dispatch Varun for a six before being dropped by Shreyas Iyer near the boundary rope.
Rachin was eventually dismissed by Kuldeep Yadav, on the first ball of the left-arm wrist-spinner’s bowling.
In the match, Rohit Sharma lost his 12th successive toss in ODIs, matching Brian Lara‘s record. India went ahead with an unchanged XI for the final.
At the toss, Rohit said, “We’ve been here enough, batted first and bowled first, don’t really mind batting second. It hasn’t changed much, we’ve chased and won as well. It does give you a lot of confidence, takes the toss away from the game. At the end of the day, what matters is how well you want to play.”
“That’s what we’ve spoken about in the dressing room, not to worry about the toss and to just play well, that’s what we’ve done and we have to do today as well. New Zealand have been a very good team over the past so many years, they tend to play good cricket in ICC tournaments. The challenge for us is to play well against them now. Same team for us,” he added.
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