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What TV doesn't, print can't; we deliver.
NEW DELHI: Indian team put up a clinical performance in the 4th T20I at Florida to thrash West Indies by 59 runs and take an unassailable 3-1 lead in the five-match series. This is India’s 5th consecutive bilateral T20I series victory against West Indies. Before the T20Is, India had won the ODI series 3-0.
The visitors batted first after losing the toss and the openers – Rohit Sharma and Suryakumar Yadav – lent a bracing start to the team. Rohit cracked a couple of boundaries in the first two overs but ran amok in the 3rd when left-arm seamer Obed McCoy came to bowl. The Indian captain blasted him for a couple of sixes over deep mid-wicket and long-off. Surya also reeled off a six as McCoy conceded 25 runs in his first over.
The 53-run alliance was snapped by the lefty-arm spinner Akeal Hosein who castled Rohit for 16-ball 33. In the next over, Surya was also dismissed as he tried to flick Alzarri Joseph but was trapped in front of the stumps. The run-rate dropped a bit after the openers were ripped out but Rishabh Pant and Deepak Hooda – who came to bat at no.3 – did not let West Indies bowlers make further inroads.
Both of them added 47 runs for the third wicket before Hooda perished for 21. Pant and Sanju Samson kept the scoreboard ticking as they whipped out a string of boundaries. Pant was finally prised out by McCoy for 44 in the 15th over.
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West Indies bowlers bowled tightly between 16 and 18 overs and conceded only 17 runs in those 3 overs. In the 19th over, Axar Patel bludgeoned two sixes off McCoy – who had a terrible day and gave away 66 runs in 4 overs – to give some momentum to the innings in the final overs. His 8-ball 20 propelled India to 191-5 in 20 overs.
Chasing 192, West Indies opener Brandon King smashed a couple of boundaries off Bhuvneshwar Kumar in the first over but was snared by Avesh Khan in the next over. Avesh also accounted for Devon Thomas in the next over as the hosts slumped to 22-2. Captain Nicholas Pooran biffed three sixes and tried to pull West Indies out of trouble but after he was run out in the 5th over, all the hopes came crashing down. In his brief innings, Pooran made 24 runs off just 8 balls.
His dismissal threw the innings in a terminal tailspin as other batters surrendered abjectly. The left-arm seamer Arshdeep Singh and leg-spinner Ravi Bishnoi snapped up three and two wickets respectively and demolished the West Indies. The hosts were ultimately skittled out for 132 in 19.1 overs and fell to a 59-run defeat.
