Nitish Reddy took a wicket with the first ball of each of his three overs, and India sealed the series

Nitish Kumar Reddy bowled three overs at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on Tuesday night and took a wicket with the first ball of each of them. Ibrahim Zadran, Gulbadin Naib, Rashid Khan. Three overs, three opening deliveries, three wickets, and by the time Sanju Samson had finished with the chase India had won the second T20I by seven wickets with 31 balls to spare and taken the series 2-0 with a match still to come.

Three overs, three first-ball wickets

Reddy finished with 3 for 24 and the player-of-the-match award, and the shape of the spell was the strange part. Bowlers get one ball wrong and pay for it. Reddy got the first one right three times in a row, which is not a thing any bowler plans for.

Zadran was the wicket that mattered. Afghanistan’s captain had put on 51 with Sediqullah Atal and looked set for the innings that turns 159 into 185, and he went for 37 off 33. Gulbadin followed the same way. So did Rashid, who by then was Afghanistan’s second-highest scorer of the night on 28 off 16, batting like a man who had worked out that nobody above him was going to do it.

Arshdeep Singh took two, and Jasprit Bumrah, Axar Patel and Ravi Bishnoi shared the rest. Mohammad Nabi made 20 off 14. Afghanistan’s 159 for 8 was not a bad total on a used Delhi surface in the middle of a three-match series, and it lasted 89 balls.

Samson’s 22-ball 57

India were 82 without loss after the powerplay. That is the whole match in one number.

Samson reached fifty off 20 balls and was out for 57 off 22, with seven fours and four sixes in it, which means 52 of his 57 runs came in boundaries. Abhishek Sharma went at the other end for 39 off 19. They were gone by the seventh over and it did not matter, because Afghanistan had conceded 99 runs by then and still had 13 overs of the innings to find somewhere to bowl.

Ishan Kishan finished it with 38 not out off 23, Tilak Varma was 15 not out alongside him, and Shreyas Iyer’s 11 off 11 was the only innings of the night that looked like normal cricket. Rashid took all three wickets to fall and went for 36 off his 3.5 overs, which on a night like this counts as a decent return.

What Thursday is for

Afghanistan were 43 for 5 inside seven overs in the first match on Sunday, and the batting has now failed in two different ways inside two matches: a collapse they half-repaired, then a start that never accelerated. Zadran is captaining the side as well as opening it, and the top order around him has produced one substantial partnership in two nights.

The third T20I is at the same ground on Thursday, 7:30pm IST. With the series gone it is a dead rubber for India, who have an Asian Games title to defend in Japan later this month, and a last chance for Afghanistan to take something out of a week in which they have been beaten by seven wickets twice. Zadran will want a total that gives his bowlers something to defend. On current evidence that means a lot more than 159.

Stay across India’s home season