3 Records broken in the first T20I between India and South Africa

Indians hosted the South African team in Thiruvananthapuram for the first T20I of the three-match series. The match was played at the Greenfield International Stadium. The men in blue gave no chance to the visitors to dominate enough to win the match. Indian skipper Rohit Sharma decided to bowl first on the green surface of GICS.

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The pace duo of Deepak Chahar and Arshdeep Singh proved their captain right by scalping a combined five-wicket haul only on the score of nine runs to trouble the visitors in the powerplay over only. With the struggle 41-run knock from Keshav Maharaj, the proteas somehow managed to post a total of 106 runs for the loss of eight wickets in the allotted 20 overs.

Indian team comfortably chased down the target on the backs of the batting heroics of Suryakumar Yadav and KL Rahul. Other than the win of the men in blue, there were a couple of records that were broken in the curtain raiser of the three-match series between India and South Africa.

So, here we’ll have a look at three records that were broken during this match.

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Lowest-ever powerplay for India in T20 internationals

It was understood that the pitch is going to behave extremely south in the aftermath of the South African innings at the Greenfield’s green turf. As the South Africans could’ve posted a low total of 106 so the hosts were not looking in any sort of hurry to rush towards the target.

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Apart from that, they kept their stress on not losing wickets in the powerplay overs. Proteas' pace attack including the likes of Wayne Parnell and Kagiso Rabada was looking dangerous and they also found success in scalping two wickets of the Indian team in powerplay overs.

So, the Indian team could score only 17 runs in the power play. It is their lowest ever total in the powerplay in the T20 internationals since the last one when they scored 21 runs for the loss of three wickets six years back in the year 2016.

KL Rahul becomes the first Indian to score the slowest T20I half-century

India lost only two wickets including the skipper Rohit Sharma and senior batter Virat Kohli. Following their dismissals, the showman Suryakumar Yadav came to the party and went up breaking the floor for India with 20 balls to spare. But apart from the quick hits of Suryakumar Yadav, another batter KL Rahul was playing in a way that left everyone to think over it.

KL scored a half-century but he took almost half of the balls of the Indian innings to reach these 50 runs. The 30-year-old scored his half-century in 56 balls. With this sluggish knock, he has also become the first Indian to score the slowest T20I half-century.

Suryakumar Yadav becomes the batter with most T20I sixes in a calendar year

During his half-century knock, Yadav went on to beat two records and took himself to the top. Firstly, he became the first batter to score the most sixes in any calendar in the shortest format of the game. With just two sixes, he surpassed the star Pakistani batter Mohammad Rizwan who smashes 42 sixes last year in 2021. Sky took only 21 innings to hit 45 sixes in a calendar year in comparison to the 26 innings of Mohammad Rizwan.

Along with being the sixer king, he has also become the first Indian to score the highest runs in a calendar year. The right-hander surpassed the record of senior southpaw Shikhar Dhawan who notched 689 runs with an average of 40.52 four years back in the year 2018.

Whereas Surya has now scored 732 runs with an average of 40.66 and an amazing strike rate of 180.29 in the ongoing calendar year.