India 174 for 3 (Kohli 82, Pandey 51*) beat Sri Lanka 170 for 7 (Munaweera 53, Priyanjan 40, Chahal 3-43, Kuldeep 2-20) by seven wickets
Scorecard and ball-by-ball details
Virat Kohli ended his tour of Sri Lanka with scores of 131, 110* and 82 © Getty Images
Three-nil in the Tests, five-nil in the ODIs, a crushing eight-wicket win in the one-off T20I. Virat Kohli followed up successive hundreds in the last two ODIs with another display of ruthless efficiency in a chase, and ensured India left Sri Lanka no crumbs of comfort at the end of a long and chastening month-and-a-half for the hosts.
Set 171 to win, India romped home with four balls remaining and Manish Pandey making his third important contribution in a row, following up 50* and 36 in the last two ODIs with his maiden T20I fifty.
Kohli, the only batsman with 1000 T20I runs and a 50-plus average, ended his tour with 82 off 54 balls, an innings that oozed arrogance. It was present in the shots he played – an umpire-endangering blast down the ground and a bottom-handed whip through midwicket, both off Lasith Malinga, standing out among his seven fours and a six – but especially in the way he admonished himself, bat slapping pad in annoyance, for little moments of imprecision: for putting too much weight on a clip down the ground and ending up with a single rather than two, for placing front-foot slap a few inches closer to the extra-cover fielder than he would have liked and ending up with a single rather than four. It was as if the opposition did not matter.
More to follow…
Karthik Krishnaswamy is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo
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Source: ESPN Crickinfo