The vulnerability of Indian bowling while defending a total in T20Is thoroughly exposed once again as a disciplined West Indies chased down 170 Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday (December 8) night with nine balls and eight wickets to spare to draw level in the three-match series.
It was a clinical run-chase by West Indies. Lendl Simmons (67 not out off 45 balls) along with Evin Lewis (40 off 35 balls) added 73 for the first wicket to set the tone early. Then in the middle-overs Shimron Hetmyer (23 off 14) and Nicholas Pooran (38 off 18) played excellent second-fiddles to Simmons, who showed his experience while anchoring the innings.
Defending a below-par score the Indian bowlers failed to control the wet ball. They were also pegged back by some ordinary fielding a drop catches. The bowlers, especially spinners Ravindra Jadeja (1/22 in 2 overs) and Yuzvendra Chahal (0/36 in 3 overs) were way off the mark. And the Windies batsmen pounced on them and dominated proceedings with half-dozen sixes apart from 11 boundaries.
Simmons hit four sixes while Lewis and Hetmyer hit three each which put the spinners under extreme pressure and they bowled mostly flatter trajectory on a turning pitch. Attacking the Indian slow bowlers was a part of Windies gameplan and the batters executed it brilliantly. The two Indian medium pacers – Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Deepak Chahar – were ineffective as well, which meant that the bowling was unable to put any sort of resistance against the rampaging Caribbean batsmen as they took their team to a comfortable victory.
Earlier after losing the toss and batting first, most of the Indian batters struggled with their timings. Barring Shivam Dube, who batting at No.3 scored his maiden half-century (54 off 30) in the national colours, none of his colleagues was able to dominate the bowlers. Right from the start, the hosts struggled to gather momentum as wickets kept falling at regular intervals.
Kesrick Williams after being subjected to humiliation from Virat Kohli, came back strongly with figures of 2 for 30 in his four overs including the prized scalp of the Indian captain (19 of 17 balls). Interestingly, there were no ‘Notebook Celebrations’ but just a quiet ‘finger on lips’ this time around.
India didn’t get the required push during the death overs as they scored only 38 runs in the last overs of the innings on a slowish track where Caribbean seamers used a lot of back of length slower deliveries along with well-disguised short balls.
Rishabh Pant (33 not out off 22 balls) tried his best but couldn’t connect the big shots towards the end as India posted an average score despite the Windies bowlers bowling 13 wides and two no-balls during the first half of the match.
For the visitors young leg-spinner Hayden Walsh bowled beautifully to get 2 for 28 in his four overs.
The series decider will now be played at the Wankhede stadium on Wednesday (December 11).
Brief scores:
India 170/7 in 20 overs (Shivam Dube 54, Rishabh Pant 33*; Hayden Walsh 2/28) lost to West Indies 173/2 in 18.3 overs (Lendl Simmons 67*, Evin Lewis 40; Washington Sundar 1/26) by eight wickets.
Player of the match: Lendl Simmons