When Dinesh Karthik broke Bangladeshi hearts

T20 cricket has given us heart-stopping, nail-biting finals in its two-decade history. We're counting down the ten greatest, internationals included, in reverse order.

Bangladesh vs India, Nidahas Trophy final, Colombo, 2018

India won by four wickets

What is the only cricket video with more than 200 million views on YouTube?

It isn't Virat Kohli's shot that was heard around the world against Haris Rauf at the MCG.

It isn't MS Dhoni realising a billion dreams at the Wankhede.

It isn't anything from Sachin Tendulkar's glittering career either.

Clocking 245 million on the official Sri Lanka Cricket channel, the honour belongs to Dinesh Karthik and his last-over heroics in the Nidahas Trophy final. Coming in at a distant second, with 151 million views, is Karthik's 19th-over heroics in the same game.

But why? Could it be that a sizeable chunk of India's gargantuan fan base simply skipped watching a final against Bangladesh live? The Nidahas tri-series - shoehorned into the small gap between India's long tour of South Africa and the IPL, and with Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, Hardik Pandya and Jasprit Bumrah resting - may not have been a huge draw for a cricket-saturated audience. Until Karthik did what he did, and made millions rush online to live and relive a finish that may not seem so surreal now. It certainly did back then.

If March 2018 doesn't seem that long ago, think again. Rishabh Pant was only two T20Is old at the time, and yet to make his Test and ODI debuts. AB de Villiers was still playing for South Africa. And Ben Stokes had not yet performed the miracle of Headingley.

So the demand of 34 to win off 12 balls - eminently possible in today's T20 world - seemed unlikely to be fulfilled when Karthik walked into bat at the Premadasa Stadium in Colombo seven years ago. He later said he had been eager to go in as early as the second over of the chase, but his captain, Rohit Sharma, kept holding him back.

Mustafizur Rahman had just bowled a wicket maiden and had Manish Pandey caught at long-on off the final ball of the 18th over. According to today's rules Vijay Shankar, struggling on 12 off 15, would have been on strike at the start of the 19th but the batters crossed before the catch was taken, and according to the rules back then, Karthik faced the first ball of the penultimate over.

The Colombo crowd was antagonistic to Bangladesh because of the visitors' beef with the home team © NurPhoto/Getty Images

18.1 from Rubel Hossain: Karthik stood outside his crease, moved further forward to convert a yorker into a full toss, and shovelled it over the straight boundary.

He used the depth of the crease to convert the next two balls into half-volleys, slamming the first wide of long-off for four and the second over square leg for six. Karthik raced to 22 off six balls by scooping 18.6 to the long-leg boundary.

It came down to nine off three balls with Shankar facing the part-timer Soumya Sarkar on 13 off 17. After all his struggle, Shankar squeezed a full delivery through backward point and found the boundary to keep India in it. With five to get off two, though, Shankar holed out, but not before crossing and bringing Karthik back on strike, which again wouldn't have been allowed in today's game.

19.6. Five to get off one ball. Dispatched flat, hard and just far enough to clear the cover boundary. Bedlam in the stands. Karthik invisible under a heap of blue bodies. Bangladesh inconsolable.

They had never won a T20I against India, having come agonisingly close in the 2016 T20 World Cup. That loss, and the controversial no-ball that reprieved Rohit Sharma in the 2015 ODI World Cup quarter-final, hadn't been forgotten. Off the field, there had been provocative imagery relating to the 2016 Asia Cup: one Bangladeshi newspaper depicted Indian players with their heads half-shorn, and there were images of a severed head resembling Dhoni doing the rounds on social media. They were bristling.

Bangladesh's prickliness had turned Sri Lanka against them too: the Naagin dance, the shattered dressing-room door, the bad blood in two defeats that cost Sri Lanka a place in their home final. Never before had a Colombo crowd cheered so fiercely for India as they did that night.

Victory in the Nidahas Trophy would have been one of Bangladesh's most cherished achievements. Perhaps many of those YouTube views, then, were from their disbelieving fans, wondering how Karthik made it his own.

George Binoy is a deputy editor at ESPNcricinfo

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