India sweep T20 series

It was far from a dominating batting show after the young bowlers' inspiring show but India managed to inflict a 3-0 series whitewash on Sri Lanka with a tense five-wicket win in the third T20I yesterday.

Sri Lankan hopes to end the miserable tour on a high were raised when India struggled in a 136-run chase but eventually the hosts crossed the finish line with four balls to spare.

Sri Lanka will go home with just one ODI win from the tour while India will head to South Africa with convincing victories in all three formats.

In a hurry to collect runs, Sri Lanka ended up playing poor shots, resulting in tame dismissals and put on board a modest 135 for seven.

After the exchange India lost in-form openers -- captain Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul -- early, which affected their run-rate as Shreyas Iyer and Manish Pandey found the going tough against a fired-up Lankan attack.

However, although Iyer broke the shackles with a six off Dasun Shanka, he was soon run out after scoring 30 off 32 balls.

Hardik Pandya came ahead of MS Dhoni but did not last long and was caught behind off Shanka.

Paceman Dushmanta Chameera cleaned up Pandey, bringing Dhoni to the crease with India requiring 28 from 23 balls.

Boundaries were hard to come by but Dinesh Karthik tilted the match in India's favour by hitting a six off Nuwan Pradeep's full toss in the last ball of the 19th over.

Needing three from the last over, Dhoni got a couple from first ball and flicked the next one from Thisara Perera to the mid-wicket boundary to finish the game.

Earlier, Asela Gunaratne was the only batsman, who applied himself well and played a slow but crucial 36-run knock that took Sri Lanka past the 100-run mark.

Unadkat, who generated a lot of pace in his first spell, was the most outstanding Indian bowler with impressive figures of 4-0-15-2.

SCORES IN BRIEF

SRI LANKA: 135 for 7 (Gunaratne 36, Shanaka 29; Undakat 2-15, Pandya 2-25)

INDIA: 139 for 5 in 19.2 overs (Iyer 30, Pandey 32, Karthik 18 not out; Shanaka 2-27, Chameera 2-22)

Result: India won by 5 wickets.

Player-of-the-match: Jaydev Unadkat.

Player-of-the-series: Jaydev Unadkat.