Records were broken and Windies once again found themselves on the losing side. India’s 52nd stadium made a debut. Rohit Sharma became the only batsman to record 4 hundred in T20 Internationals. Here’s an outlook of the match:
Indian Innings:
Apparently, after the 1st over, no over seemed to have enough to have any Indian batsmen in trouble. It looked at a point that the target will not be crossing anything like 170 as first boundary of the innings came in 3rd over from the bat of Rohit Sharma. Then boundaries started to flow from Rohit’s end. Shikhar Dhawan never looked going big and smooth. His innings of 43 of 41 comprising of only 3 fours eventually ended like he didn’t want it to and couldn’t utilize the life given by Keemo Paul. The positive for him was the milestone of getting to 1000 runs in T20 Internationals.
There was no stopping Rohit Sharma though. He started being at the receiving end of a maiden over but he redeemed that well. He took on Khary Piere and spared no one from then. He hit 7 sixes and 8 fours in his innings of 111 (61). Pant tried to go hard from the other end but perished in the quest on 5. KL Rahul showed positivity by hitting some meaningful runs and stayed not out, courtesy a dropped catch from Pollard (of all people).
Windies Innings:
At the beginning of the chase, Shai Hope showed a glimpse of his talent by hitting an out swinging delivery from Bhuvaneshwar Kumar for a straight six and got bowled after 4 balls by Khaleel Ahmed. Darren Bravo and Shimron Hetmyer lunged forward without fulfilling the run rate. Shimron Hetmyer perished in the process to break the shackles and a bat-turned shot of his found the fielder at long on.
Darren Bravo edged a skiddy legspinner of Kuldeep into Rohit Sharma’s hands at slip after smacking a powerful shot down the ground in previous over. Nicholas Pooran in his innings of 3 balls, missed 1st one, beautifully paddled 2nd one and was deceived by the one that comes in (wrong’un) by Kuldeep. Pollard got out to his Mumbai Indian fellow, Bumrah, after colliding with him and was caught and bowled.
Ramdin and Fabian Allen went to the pavilion in succession. Only good over of their innings was the 18th one (all the damage has been done till that) in which 19 runs were scored off Kuldeep Yadav to spoil his economy from 4.33 to 8. Windies finished by hitting 2 fours in last 3 balls of Bumrah’s final over but lost by a hefty 71 run margin.
