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Sunday, March 16, 2025

Arshdeep and “Sky” catapult India into Super Eight

by

Sport Desk
276 days ago
20240613
India's Suryakumar Yadav plays a shot against the United States during the ICC Men's T20 World Cup cricket match at the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in Westbury, New York, yesterday. India won by seven wickets.

India's Suryakumar Yadav plays a shot against the United States during the ICC Men's T20 World Cup cricket match at the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in Westbury, New York, yesterday. India won by seven wickets.

AP Photo

EAST MEAD­OW – In­dia qual­i­fied for the Su­per Eight stage of the ICC Men’s Twen­ty20 World Cup af­ter left-arm pac­er Ar­shdeep Singh and en­ter­pris­ing bats­man Suryaku­mar Ya­dav played lead­ing roles in a sev­en-wick­et win against tour­na­ment co-hosts Unit­ed States in their top-of-the-ta­ble bat­tle on Wednes­day.

Ar­shdeep cap­tured four for nine from his al­lot­ted four overs – in­clud­ing two wick­ets in the first over – to earn the Play­er-of-the-Match award, and the Amer­i­cans stum­bled to 110 for eight in their al­lo­ca­tion of 20 overs af­ter they were put in to bat in their Group A match at the Nas­sau Coun­ty Sta­di­um in New York.

In­dia too, wob­bled at the start of their chase af­ter left-arm pac­er Saurabh Ne­travalkar dis­missed her­ald­ed open­ers Vi­rat Kohli for a first-ball duck and Ro­hit Shar­ma for three be­fore Ya­dav, not out on 50, and Shiv­am Dube, not out on 31, steered their side over the fin­ish line with 10 balls re­main­ing.

The win was third on the trot for In­dia af­ter they beat Ire­land by eight wick­ets last Wednes­day at the same venue, where they al­so beat po­lit­i­cal and sport­ing arch-ri­vals Pak­istan by six runs this past Sun­day.

The re­sult car­ried the In­di­ans to the top of the group on six points, and they will face Cana­da on Sat­ur­day at the Cen­tral Broward Re­gion­al Park (CBRP) in the Amer­i­can city of Lauder­hill in the state of Flori­da in their fi­nal group match.

“I am very hap­py with my per­for­mance,” Ar­shdeep said dur­ing a post-play TV in­ter­view. “In the last two games, I gave away too many runs, but the team has kept back­ing me.

“The [pitch] is help­ful for pac­ers. We’re get­ting seam move­ment, so all we had to do was hit the right lengths and let the pitch help out.”

He added: “Here, you can use the wick­et more at the death. You can back your ex­e­cu­tion with york­ers. [Jasprit] Bum­rah told me as well to sur­prise bat­ters with the bounc­ers.

“You need to have rou­tines be­fore the game starts, try­ing to keep it sim­ple and fol­low through every day. All bowlers have done well, and we are look­ing for­ward to the same in the next stage as well.”

The Amer­i­cans, sec­ond in Group A with four points af­ter this de­feat, can al­so qual­i­fy for the next round if they beat Ire­land on Fri­day al­so at the CBRP, or if the match ends in a no re­sult.

Ar­shdeep got Shayan Ja­hangir lbw for a duck with the first ball of the match, and he added the scalp of South Africa-born bats­man An­dries Gous caught at mid-on for two from a mis­cued pull at a short ball with the fi­nal ball of the first over.

The Amer­i­cans strug­gled to 18 for two at the close of the Pow­er Play, but they en­dured a ma­jor set­back when stand-in cap­tain Aaron Jones, a Bar­ba­dos Pride bats­man of re­cent vin­tage, mis­cued a hook at a short ball from Hardik Pandya and was caught at deep fine leg for 11 in the eighth over.

The Unit­ed States were 25 for three, but the long-stand­ing Ni­tish Ku­mar made the top score of 27 and burly left-han­der Steven Tay­lor, a mem­ber of the de­ac­ti­vat­ed Ja­maica Tallawahs fran­chise in the Caribbean Pre­mier League in the past, sup­port­ed with 24 and set the stage for a re­spectable to­tal.

“We were 10 to 15 runs short,” Jones said. “We know if we’d got­ten 125 to 130, it would have been a tough to­tal. The bowlers were dis­ci­plined, and we are pleased that the game got so close.”

Jones was lead­ing the Amer­i­can team be­cause reg­u­lar cap­tain Mo­nank Pa­tel was side-lined with a left shoul­der in­jury.

The In­di­an pac­ers in­dulged them­selves with a suc­ces­sion of short-pitched balls, and most of the Amer­i­can bats­men gift­ed their wick­ets play­ing ill-ad­vised, cross-bat­ted strokes at de­liv­er­ies that bounced awk­ward­ly on the no­to­ri­ous­ly un­even drop-in pitch.

But Ne­travalkar si­lenced a pre­dom­i­nant­ly In­dia-sup­port­ing crowd when he got Kohli caught at slip with the sec­ond ball of the chase, and Ro­hit caught at mid-off from a lead­ing edge with the sec­ond ball of his sec­ond over.

In­dia were 15 for two and closed the Pow­er Play on 33 for two be­fore Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers pac­er Ali Khan bowled Rishabh Pant for 18 in the eighth over, but Ne­travalkar went from hero to ze­ro when he dropped a swirling chance from Ya­dav, on 22, in the 13th over.

The In­di­ans were 59 for three, and Ya­dav and Dube found the bound­ary with greater ease fol­low­ing that spill and ush­ered their side over the fin­ish line.

This was the fi­nal fix­ture in the tour­na­ment at the Nas­sau Coun­ty Sta­di­um, where the string of low-scor­ing match­es did not ap­pear to damp­en the en­thu­si­asm of the crowds or di­min­ish the in­ter­est in the sport.

CMC

Scores:

UNIT­ED STATES 110 for eight off 20 overs (Ni­tish Ku­mar 27, Steven Tay­lor 24; Ar­shdeep Singh 4-9, Hardik Pandya 2-14).

IN­DIA 111 for three off 18.2 overs (Suryaku­mar Ya­dav 50 not out, Shiv­am Dube 31 not out; Saurabh Ne­travalkar 2-18).

In­dia won by sev­en wick­ets.

Play­er in the Match: Ar­shdeep Singh (In­dia)


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