Following India’s easy victory over New Zealand in their third and last Group A game of the Champions Trophy 2025 in Dubai on Sunday, Virat Kohli took the trophy for best fielder. On the field, Kohli was a livewire who took Matt Henry’s sky-high grab that also assisted Varun Chakaravarthy in an inaugural five-wickets haul in ODIs.
Throwdown expert Nuwan Seneviratne handed the fielding medal. But the medal disappeared for a short time before he could do the honors.
Normalcy returned when one of three competitors—which included Shreyas Iyer—recovered the missed reward.
India fielding coach T Dilip was full of compliments during the match against New Zealand for the “bullet throws” that kept the opponent batters—especially Daryl Mitchell—from consistently rotating the strike.
“Our subject is the fielding unit of guns always.” Being proactive is most important for me in this respect. Different stages of the match we snuck in and especially when Mitchell came in—he couldn could not rotate the strike. The bullet tosses came from the outfield and the infield really compressed them up,” Dilip noting.
India have completed their group stage games for the Champions Trophy with three victories in three matches. Before dominating Pakistan in their next game, they started their campaign with a six-wicket win over Bangladesh.
With India and New Zealand moving ahead, Pakistan and Bangladesh were next eliminated from the semifinal competition.
India set up a semifinal encounter with world champs Australia in Dubai on Tuesday by defeating New Zealand 44 runs in their last group game.
In the second semifinal in Lahore on Wednesday, New Zealand will play South Africa.
