India vs Sri Lanka: Hardik Pandya’s captaincy, Shivam Mavi’s dream debut and more talking points

At a stadium where the bowlers historically do not have much to boast about, the first T20I of 2023 between India and Sri Lanka was a game highlighted by the performance of the bowling units of both sides. A target of 161, which would have been thought of as below par at the Wankhede Stadium was made to look like a mountain of runs by the Indian bowling attack.

Not to forget Sri Lanka’s efforts as the bowlers hunted in pack and restricted India for such a total in first place.

India held nerves and snatched a two-run win as Sri Lanka lament their loss after coming so close to chasing the target.

As cricket resumes in the new year for India, we continue talking about what happened and how it happened.

That’s that from the 1st T20I.#TeamIndia win by 2 runs and take a 1-0 lead in the series.

Scorecard – https://t.co/uth38CaxaP #INDvSL @mastercardindia pic.twitter.com/BEU4ICTc3Y

— BCCI (@BCCI) January 3, 2023

Here are the talking points from India vs Sri Lanka 1^st T20I –

Shivam Mavi’s dream-like debut spell

India will be pleased with the performance of one of their two debutants as Shivam Mavi returned with a four-wicket spell and also brought India back in the hunt.

In fact, Mavi is only the third Indian bowler to bag four wickets on his T20I debut after Barinder Sran and Pragyan Ojha.

For his brilliant bowling figures of 4/22 on his debut game, @ShivamMavi23 is our Top Performer from the second innings.

A look at his bowling summary here