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)