India registered a 6-wicket victory against West Indies at Eden Gardens on Wednesday, 16 February. Two belligerent innings from Rohit Sharma and Suryakumar Yadav set India on the path of victory despite their other players struggling for most of the innings.
Chasing 158 on a pitch that slightly gripped, Rohit Shamra got off to a belligerent start at his favourite venue and scored 40 off 19 before holing Roston Chase out to mid wicket. While the captain was off to a flyer, his Mumbai Indians understudy Ishan Kishan struggled to find timing and scored an underwhelming 35 off 42 and once again fell victim to Roston Chase in the deep.
Virat Kohli looked good for his 17 but was caught at long off by Kieron Pollard while trying to clear Fabian Allen.
Just when runs were becoming scarce Suryakumar Yadav showed his ability once again and brought his full repertoire of shots to the party, scoring all over the ground. 35 off 18 got the runs flowing once again and introduction of Venkatesh Iyer after Rishab Pant’s soft dismissal helped. He started hitting boundaries from the word go and scored 24 off 13 on the other end helping India chase down 158 with 7 balls remaining.
Earlier in the innings, West Indies’ conservative approach to their batting in the first 10 overs turned out to be the writing on the wall. They struggled to hit the pacers early on and then could not get away debutant Ravi Bishnoi. All among Brandon King, Rovman Powell and Roston Chase failed to score while Kyle Mayers put on a struggling 31 off 24 balls.
This meant that Nicholas Pooran dug deep and latched on to his crease till the time he could start getting his shots away. Pooran stayed till the 18th over of the match and scored an exciting 61 off 43 balls which was laden with 4 boundaries and 5 sixes. Barring the left hander, Kieron Pollard also scored 24 off 19 to take Windies to a safe score which turned out to be too low on the day.
Ravi Bishnoi was declared the player of the match for his great outing of 4-0-17-2; he admitted being nervous at the start of the game resulted in a lot of wides getting bowled. He stated that he understands his strengths and he will work on them in the next matches.
With the win, India have stretched their run of win to four matches and will look to continue it in the next two games remaining in the series.