Hosts United States of America (USA) registered a comfortable victory over Canada (CAN) in the inaugural match of the ICC T20 World Cup 2024 on (Sunday) June 2, at the Grand Prairie Stadium, in Dallas.
After being asked to bat first, Canada got off to a flying start, as both the openers Aaron Johnson and Navneet Dhaliwal gave their side a solid start. Both stitched a 43-run partnership for the first wicket. Johnson walked back to the pavilion after scoring a 16 ball 23. Pargat Singh departed early after adding just five runs to the tally. From there Dhaliwal and Nicholas Kirton took the responsibility to take the Canadian side to a good position. Dhaliwal scored a 44 ball 61 and Kirton hit a 31 ball 51. Shreyas Movva played a quickfire knock of 32 to propel his side to 194/5 in their allotted 20 overs.
Ali Khan, Harmeet Singh and Corey Anderson were the pick of the bowlers for the hosts as they shared three wickets between them. The USA side were great in the field bagging two run-outs.
Coming to the chase, the US got off to a terrible start losing the wicket of Steven Taylor on the second ball of the innings. Skipper Monank Patel fell right after as he scored just 16 runs off 16 balls. It was the partnership between Andries Gous and Aaron Jones that helped the hosts register a comfortable win in the very first game of the marquee event. Kaleem Sana and Nikhil Dutta shared two wickets between them.
1. Gous-Jones' camaraderie helps USA pull off a brilliant win
Wicketkeeper-batter Andries Gous took the responsibility to guide his team to an important win. Along with him right-hand batter Aaron Jones played an aggressive innings. Gous smashed a 46 ball- 65, hitting seven boundaries and three sixes. But it was Jones who stole the show with a quickfire knock of 94 runs off 40 balls to make sure his side is in a comfortable position. Both put up a partnership of 131 runs as USA registered a victory with 14 balls to spare.
2. Harmeet Singh bowls an economical spell
All-rounder Harmeet Singh bowled an important spell for the USA side. In his four overs, Singh picked the first wicket of Aaron Johnson. He conceded 27 runs with an economy of 6.75. The 31-year-old's performance has always been crucial for his side.
Here's what losing skipper Saad Bin Zafar said:
194 was a great total. I was pretty happy. We started well but Jones and Gous batted exceptionally well and our bowlers had no chance. Pitch had good bounce and it did get better for batting in the second innings with dew coming in. We missed the line and lengths. No balls and extras we shouldn't have given away those. We played an exceptional game overall. Nothing to be sad effort. Good effort from the boys, this is just the start and hope we can do well in the next game.
Here's what winning skipper Monank Patel said:
The way we've been playing against Canada in previous series...I thought it was a whole team effort. Gous and Jones handled the pressure situation, took the game out of Canada. (USA's bowling effort) As soon as we bowled, the ball was coming well. We bowled well in patches but we gave 10-15 runs extra. (Ball helping Canada seamers early) I didn't expect that in the first six overs. Ball was two-paced too. (Jones innings) We've always known, he has the game. He played fearless cricket and backing his shots. It was clean hitting. (Texas crowd) Really happy to see the numbers. They were really energetic and hope they continue to support us. We want to continue the way we are playing. Don't want to change our fearless cricket whether we play Pakistan or India."
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