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Indian all-rounder Hardik Pandya overtook legendary all-rounder Yuvraj Singh to person the astir doubles of a half-century and astatine slightest a wicket during a T20I lucifer successful past for his nation.
The swashbuckling all-rounder added this awesome feather successful his headdress during the 5th and last T20I against South Africa connected Friday (December 19, 2025).
Having been fixed a cushion of other runs by Sanju Samson and Abhishek Sharma, Hardik torched the full Proteas bowling onslaught each implicit the parkland alongside Tilak Varma, dealing with fours and sixes that oozed power, people and swagger.
Hardik scored 63 successful conscionable 25 balls, with 5 fours and 5 sixes each. His runs came astatine a onslaught complaint of 252.00. While bowling, helium did springiness distant 41 runs successful 3 overs, but got the prized wicket of Dewald Brevis, who was conscionable taking off, cutting his sound abbreviated astatine 17-ball 31, with 3 fours and 2 sixes.
Now, Hardik has 4 instances scoring a half-century and taking astatine slightest a wicket successful a T20I for India successful a T20I match, 1 much than the Indian icon. Virat Kohli besides finds a notation successful this list, having emulated this feat against Pakistan successful the T20 World Cup backmost successful 2012 and against West Indies successful the 2016 T20 WC. Next is all-rounder Shivam Dube, who has besides achieved this feat twice.
Hardik, who marked his instrumentality to planetary cricket with this series, ended arsenic the third-highest run-getter successful the series, with 142 runs successful 3 innings astatine an mean of 71.00 and a onslaught complaint of 186.84. He produced 2 half-centuries successful the series, some coming successful a winning effort. Besides this, helium besides took 3 wickets astatine an mean of 38.00, with champion figures of 1/16. But his system complaint of supra 10 was a flimsy concern.
Coming to the match, Proteas won the flip and enactment India to tract first. Openers Samson (37 successful 22 balls, with 4 boundaries and 2 sixes) and Abhishek (34 successful 21 balls, with six fours and a six) gave India a fiery commencement with a 63-run basal successful conscionable 5.4 overs.
After a little stumble pursuing dismissals of Samson and skipper Suryakumar Yadav (5), Tilak (73 successful 42 balls, with 10 fours and a six) and Hardik enactment connected a 105-run basal for the 4th wicket, taking India to 231/5 successful 20 overs. Corbin Bosch (2/44) was the prime of the bowlers for SA.
During the run-chase of 232 runs, SA did enactment up a 69-run opening stand, which was chiefly owed to the efforts of opener Quinton de Kock (65 successful 35 balls, with 9 fours and 3 sixes), who continued his emotion matter with Indian bowling.
Reeza Hendricks (13 successful 12 balls, with a four) was the archetypal unfortunate of evening’s starring wicket-taker, Varun Chakravarthy (4/53). Brevis did springiness India a scare with his knock, sticking astir for different half-century basal with QDK to instrumentality SA to 120 successful the 11th over. However, pursuing his dismissal, Proteas mislaid wickets regularly and ne'er rather managed to marque a comeback, falling abbreviated by 30 runs and restricted to 201/8 successful 20 overs.
Jasprit Bumrah (2/17) was besides awesome successful his four-over quota, portion Arshdeep besides took a wicket.
Pandya took location the ‘Player of the Match’ grant arsenic India sealed the bid 3-1, portion Varun got the ‘Player of the Series’ grant for taking 10 wickets astatine an mean of 11.20 and an system complaint of 7.46.
