Forty-Five All Out: Kishan Finds a Way, Bumrah Finds the Cracks, and India Walk Into the Gold-Medal Match

There are pitches on which 169 is a decent score, and there are pitches on which 169 is a mountain with the ladder pulled up behind it. Korogi Sports Park on Thursday was the second kind. The surface had cracks in it, the ball turned square for the finger spinners and leapt off a length for the one fast bowler who really mattered, and India — playing their first cricket of these Games after a washed-out quarter-final — had to work out a way to bat on it before they could think about anything else.

They worked it out. India 169 for 7. Sri Lanka 45 all out in 9.5 overs. Ishan Kishan made 80 not out from 46 balls, more than double anyone else in the match. Then Jasprit Bumrah took two wickets before Sri Lanka had a run on the board, three batters ran themselves out, and it was over inside the tenth over. India won by 124 runs, their biggest T20I win against Sri Lanka, and the defending champions are in the gold-medal match. Against Pakistan, as it happens.

Sri Lanka's decision to bowl looked very good for a while. Abhishek Sharma hit a six and was gone to his third ball, reaching outside off and lobbing Sahan Arachchige to short third. Sanju Samson backed away once too often and Tharindu Ratnayake fired one into his stumps. India were 24 for 2 after three overs, and the ball was already doing things that make batters look at the pitch rather than the bowler.

Vaibhav Sooryavanshi's answer was to not let it land where the spinners wanted. He made room, or stood still and slapped, and took 4, 6, 4 off Ratnayake to bring up the fifty. His 38 came from 21 balls with six fours and two sixes, and then he was out exactly as Abhishek had been — down the track, thick edge, short third. India were 59 for 3 in the seventh over, and in came Kishan.

What followed was a slow squeeze at one end and something quite different at the other. Shreyas Iyer was bowled by Wanuja Sahan for 13. Axar Patel, promoted, made 8 from 13. Tilak Varma was stumped for 2 and Shivam Dube made 3 from 9. From 59 for 3, the other batters contributed very little — and India still added 110 in 13.4 overs, because Kishan made 80 of them.

Bumrah's first over is the one people will talk about. Sineth Jayawardena tried to hit across the line second ball and was leg-before to one that seamed in. Three balls later Sohan de Livera nicked the angle from over the wicket to Samson. Sri Lanka were 0 for 2 — the first time India have taken two wickets in a men's T20I before conceding a run. In the next over Lasith Croospulle was run out by Ravi Bishnoi from short third without facing a ball. Two for three.

Axar Patel then did what Axar does on a turning pitch. Arachchige and Ashen Bandara both swept, both were caught, and it was 18 for 5 in the fourth over. Nuwanidu Fernando hit Washington Sundar for two sixes in three balls, the only moment of defiance in the innings, and then set off for a single to short third that was never there. Thirty-one for six. His 15 was Sri Lanka's top score. Extras, with 11, came second.

The end was abrupt even by the standards of what had gone before. The last three wickets fell on 45 in three balls — a run-out, a stumping, a bowled — with Abhishek Sharma taking two in five deliveries. Three run-outs in an innings of 59 balls tells you something about the state of mind. Forty-five is the joint-lowest total by a Full Member in men's T20Is, level with West Indies against England in 2019.

Eighty not out from 46 balls, four fours and five sixes, on a pitch where the next best score on either side was 38 and the one after that was 15. You could stop there and the case is made.

But what I liked was the judgment. He hit two sixes in his first dozen balls, so the bowlers knew the bad ball would go. Then, as wickets fell around him, he waited. The fifty came from 33 balls in the 17th over. He had some luck — a few miscues fell safe, and Nuwanidu Fernando put him down at mid-off on 56 — and on a surface like this you need some. India hit four fours and four sixes in the last eight overs, and Kishan hit all of them except the final six, which was Washington's. Take his runs out and India are defending something close to 90. With Bumrah, that might still have been enough. Nobody in the Indian dressing room will have wanted to find out.

Our semi-finals preview leaned towards an India v Pakistan final, and that is the final we have. So the headline call stands. The worry we raised was the cold start — India arriving at a knockout without a ball bowled in the tournament, against a side with momentum. As it turned out, Sri Lanka's quarter-final was washed out as well, so both teams were starting from scratch, and the argument never really applied.

Where we were off was the surface. We quoted a first-innings average of around 124 at this ground and noted that batting first had won five of nine. India made 169 on a pitch considerably more difficult than those numbers suggest, and the margin — 124 runs — was nothing a venue average could have told you.

India play Pakistan for the gold medal at Korogi Sports Park on Saturday, October 3, at 10:00 AM IST — the first India v Pakistan final of 2026. Pakistan came through the first semi-final by six wickets against Bangladesh in a 13-over game. If the pitch behaves anything like this one, India's four spinners and Bumrah make them a very difficult side to chase against, and the toss becomes a real conversation.

Sri Lanka meet Bangladesh in the bronze-medal match earlier the same day, at 5:30 AM IST. They bowled well enough for 14 overs here — Arachchige's 2 for 28 and Croospulle's 1 for 25 were good spells — and a medal is still there for them. They will need to bat for longer than 59 balls to get it.