The silken grace of Rohit Sharma’s bat had been on display during the World Cup recently and while it didn’t last too long in the first T20I, it made a reappearance in this one. Aided by a better batting surface than yesterday, Rohit put the West Indian bowling to blade with a 51-ball 67. And in the company of 20s from Shikhar Dhawan and Virat Kohli and a late flourish from Krunal Pandya, he guided India to 167/5 from their stipulated overs.
Rovman Powell fought fire with fire as he blazed to a half-century of his own but without any support from the other end, and with first lightning and then rain halting play, West Indies fell way short of the DLS target at the point of stoppage. Here as well, much like during the Indian batting, it was Pandya’s twin strikes in the same over that took the sheen off West Indies’ chase.
Rohit’s knock was a combination of equal parts caution and aggression. Unlike on a few other surfaces where he puts the foot firmly on the pedal once he has settled in, he was forced to exercise that caution throughout his innings. But when he was not doing that, he was playing shots that had elegance all over them.
There were three sixes in his knock, and in doing so, surpassed Chris Gayle as the highest six-hitter in this format - he needed 95 games to Gayle’s 58 though - but the shot of his stay came off the bowling of left-arm seamer Sheldon Cottrell. An in-swinger on the middle stump was gracefully shown a path over the mid-off’s head for a boundary.
At the time of his dismissal, India already had 115 on the board and with six overs to be bowled, a score of 170 looked quite gettable. The next few overs were the umpteenth exhibition of India’s middle-order woes in white ball cricket in recent times. Once Rohit fell and Virat Kohli was bowled by Cottrell in an attempt to swing him over mid-wicket, India’s scoring rate fell dramatically.
Only 32 runs came off 31 deliveries between Rohit and Manish Pandey’s wicket - which was the fifth to fall - and it was just that final over onslaught from Krunal Pandya which took India to a respectable 167 for five in their 20 overs. The final over, bowled by Keemo Paul, went for 20, with Pandya hitting two sixes and Ravindra Jadeja chipping in with one of his own.
The West Indian reply was as shaky as their start in yesterday’s game. Evin Lewis was stunned by the slowness of a Bhuvneshwar second delivery and spooned back a tame catch while Sunil Narine, sent up the order to open the innings following the axing of John Campbell was bowled by Washington Sundar in the third over. This was after Sundar had begun with a maiden.
While Powell, after joining Nicholas Pooran, tried to turn things around with some classy batting of his own, the lack of support was telling. Unlike the first game, wickets weren’t lost in a hurry but the runs were also stifled when Powell wasn’t batting.
In a chase of nearly 8.5 an over, Pooran’s 19 from 34 proved to be a crucial letdown and that feeling was accentuated when Krunal grabbed both the wickets in the 14th over of the chase. Before that, the pair had added 76 for the third wicket, with 54 of those runs coming off the Powell bat. But a brilliant Manish Pandey catch at the fence, was followed almost immediately by Powell missing a Pandya delivery that straightened enough to be declared out lbw.
Kieron Pollard and Shimron Hetmyer could have made the game interesting had they had the opportunity but with 70 needed from 27 deliveries, India were clearly in front. The rain-rule pegged them 23 ahead and that’s what it remained till the match was finally called off. The third and the final match of the series will be played on Tuesday at Guyana.