Led by Suryakumar Yadav's pyrotechnics and Virat Kohli's fifty, India defeated Hong Kong by 40 runs to win their 2nd straight Asia Cup match and qualify for Super 4s.
HK won the toss and opted to field. Rishabh Pant made a comeback after missing out in the first match on Sunday against Pakistan. He was included in the place of Hardik Pandya who powered Team India's previous win with the bat as well as the ball.
Batting first, India were unexpectedly slow. They had a pretty sedate start despite all the lusty blows by Rohit. But, the Indian captain soon fell, scoring 21 (13). KL Rahul, who was coming into the game on the back of a golden duck vs Pakistan laboured his way to 36 off as many as 39 deliveries.
Virat Kohli then joined hands with Suryakumar Yadav and the duo blasted the HK bowlers all around the park. Virat's 59 (44) and SKY's 68 (26) propelled India to a monstrous target of 192.
Virat Kohli's form has been in focus for a long time now. He is going through a lean patch and has not been able to score a century for more than 1000 days.
However, Kohli's innings stirred up hopes of him getting back to his best. It was Kohli's 31st half-century in 101 T20I matches played.
The 33-year-old remained unbeaten after scoring 59 runs off 44 balls.
Chasing 193, HK struck some lusty blows but kept losing wickets at regular intervals and just couldn't gather any momentum and India eventually won the match by 40 runs.
India Playing XI: Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant, Ravindra Jadeja, Dinesh Karthik(w), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Avesh Khan, Yuzvendra Chahal, Arshdeep Singh
Hong Kong Playing XI: Nizakat Khan, Yasim Murtaza, Babar Hayat, Kinchit Shah, Aizaz Khan, Scott McKechnie, Zeeshan Ali, Haroon Arshad, Ehsan Khan, Ayush Shukla, Mohammad Ghazanfar
