Man of the Series: The English opening batsman was awarded the Man of the Series for being the highest run-scorer.
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During the third match of the ongoing England’s tour of India in Pune, India beat England by 7 runs in a cliffhanger to win the three-match series 2-1.
The sea-saw battle between two gun teams was perhaps the best way to culminate this all-format tour by England. Had it not been for England all-rounder Sam Curran’s maiden ODI half-century, the visitors would’ve lost the match without the match going down to the wire.
Curran, who scored a career-best 95* (83) with the help of nine fours and three sixes, needed to score a couple of sixes off the last two deliveries to win the match. Having dominated pretty much all the Indian bowlers, Curran couldn’t score big blows in the last over against T. Natarajan.
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For India, pacer Shardul Thakur followed his batting cameo with bowling figures of 10-0-67-4. Other than Thakur, Bhuvneshwar Kumar (10-0-42-3) also played a huge role in restricting England to 322/9 in 50 overs on the back of early wickets and economy rate.
Earlier, England had bundled out India for 329 in 48.2 overs after their captain Jos Buttler won the toss and chose to field. Despite losing wickets in clusters, India scored a competitive total on the back of quickfire individual half-centuries from Rishabh Pant (78), Shikhar Dhawan (67) and Hardik Pandya (64).
Who won the Man of the Series award today?
Much like the ‘Man of the Match‘ award, the ‘Man of the Series’ award was also won by a member of the losing team. Having scored 219 runs at an average and strike rate of 73 and 120.32 respectively, England opening batsman Jonny Bairstow ended the series as its highest run-scorer despite registering a single-digit score tonight.
Bairstow, 31, won his first-ever series award after playing in 86 ODIs. “I’ve been pleased with my striking but we’d like to be on the winning side. Today, it just wasn’t meant to be. I didn’t score a lot in the Tests, but it was pleasing to come back and do well in the white-ball leg and I’ll be taking the confidence into the IPL,” Bairstow told Star Sports during the post-match presentation ceremony.
