Photo: BCCI/Twitter

Rohit Sharma smashed two successive sixes at Seddon Park in Hamilton in the Super Over to help India win the match and clinch the five-match T20I series 3-0 against New Zealand on Wednesday.

India in the T20 series so far:

1st T20, Auckland: Shreyas Iyer finished the game with a six off Tim Southee

2nd T20, Auckland: Shivam Dube finished the game with a six off Tim Southee

3rd T20, Hamilton: Rohit Sharma finished the game with a six off Tim Southee#NZvIND

— Sarang Bhalerao (@bhaleraosarang) January 29, 2020

Chasing 18 for the win, after the match between the two ended in a tie, Rohit Sharma scored three runs in the first two balls before he returned on strike needing 10 off the final two.

Tim Southee's penultimate ball was heaved high towards the mid-wicket boundary for a maximum with the equation brought down to four off the final delivery. This time Rohit Sharma decided to thwack the full-length delivery at the long-off boundary, his six sealing the deal for India.

"Never done that before (batting in Super Over). I didn't know what to expect, whether to go from the first ball or just take a single, try and put pressure on the last three or four balls of the over," said Rohit Sharma, declared the Man of the Man. "I just wanted to stay still and was waiting for the bowler to make a mistake. The pitch was good and I was trying to stay still, see what I could do."

"It was a good performance," he added, referring to his fifty earlier. "I just wanted to come out and bat the way I do, normally. It didn't happen in the first two games so I was quite determined to do it today."

New Zealand needed nine to win in the final over and when Mohammed Shami conceded a six and a single of the first two balls, a win looked inevitable for the hosts before the pacer grabbed two wickets in the next four balls to end the match in a tie.

"Everything was packed. All my stuff was inside my bag, I had to get it out. It literally took me five minutes to find my abdomen guard because I didn't know where it was," Rohit Sharma said. "I mean we never thought it would go to the Super Over, the way they were batting at one point. It looked like they could easily win the game."

India were put in to bat first and they managed to score 179/5 with Rohit Sharma top-scoring after smashing a 40-ball 65, helped by 6 fours and 3 sixes, with the opening partnership contributing 89 runs in just nine overs.

An Icon Player in the inaugural season of the T20 Mumbai league, Rohit Sharma plundered 27 runs off a Hamish Bennett over, that included all his three sixes and two hits to the fence as he raced to a 23-ball fifty, the fastest to the milestone in an India-New Zealand T20I fixture.

He, thus, became the first Indian batsman to rack up a fifty within the powerplay and during the course of his innings became the second-fastest batsman to reach 10,000 runs in international cricket as an opener, taking 219 innings to reach the landmark, five more than Sachin Tendulkar.

Next, India will play the fourth T20I against New Zealand on Friday in Wellington.