West Indies triumphed over India by a shocking margin of four runs to win the first Twenty20 International match on Thursday. The visitors were unable to reach their modest goal of 150 runs throughout the match.
India was in a good position with 77-3 in the 11th over owing to the highest score of 39 from a rookie named Tilak Varma and 21 from Suryakumar Yadav. However, India subsequently lost six wickets for just 68 runs.
Shimron Hetmyer, who was playing international cricket for the first time in a year, was a standout on the field for the West Indies. He took three catches and was responsible for the run-out of Arshdeep Singh in the last over, which brought an end to the low-scoring matchup.
In his 22-ball innings, Varma, who is just 20 years old but has already helped light up the Indian Premier League with 343 runs for the Mumbai Indians this season, blasted three sixes.
Two of his sixes came off the bowling of Alzarri Joseph in the first three balls he faced from him.
His innings came to an end on the last delivery of the 11th over when Romario Shepherd’s fast ball was caught by Hetmyer at fine leg off the bat of Romario Shepherd, bringing the score to 77.
Ten runs earlier, Suryakumar was the third batsman to be dismissed. Hetmyer made a spectacular catch of Suryakumar by diving to his left at short extra cover to take the catch from the bowling of Jason Holder.
On a sluggish field at the Brian Lara Stadium, Hardik Pandya (19), Axar Patel (13), and Singh (12) all made decent contributions but failed to push the tempo of the game.
Holder was awarded the title of man of the match because to his outstanding performance for the West Indies, in which he posted figures of 2-19 from his four overs.
“Young team is prone to making errors.”
“We were right in the chase but we made some errors which cost us,” added Pandya. “We could have easily won.” “Mistakes are inevitable for a young team.”
Earlier, West Indies skipper Rovman Powell amassed the game’s highest score with 48 runs, helping his team to 149-6 after winning the toss and deciding to bat.
After Nicholas Pooran was out for 41, Powell’s knock of 32 balls included three fours, three sixes, and three four-run boundaries; nonetheless, the West Indies were only able to score 21 runs off of the last three overs.
Pooran was coming off a performance in which he scored 137 not out to win the match for Mumbai Indians-backed MI New York in the final of the Major League Cricket tournament in the United States the previous week.
Yuzvendra Chahal’s leg-spinner caught Kyle Mayers leg-before for one and then got rid of fellow opener Brandon King (28) in the same manner two balls later.
Johnson Charles only scored three runs when he sliced a catch to Varma in the deep off of Kuldeep Yadav’s left-arm wrist-spinner. Varma took the catch.
Before both Pooran and Powell holed out each side of Hetmyer’s departure for 10, the innings gained some pace thanks to Pooran and Powell.
“It’s a highly satisfying experience all around. We spoke about getting off to a good start in the series, and I think today was the day that we accomplished that,” said Powell.
Before moving on to Lauderhill, Florida, for the last two games of the series on August 12 and 13, the next two games of the series will be contested at Bridgetown on Sunday and Tuesday.
India defeated West Indies in the one-day international series 2-1 after winning the two-Test series 1-0.