West Indies gave India a rude awakening as they beat them by seven wickets and with eight deliveries to spare in their first Super Eights game at Lord’s in London.
Skipper M.S.Dhoni won the toss and elected to bat first. However, the decision backfired very soon in the face of some really hostile fast bowling by Fidel Edwards whose liberal use of the short ball had the batsmen hopping and jumping around. Rohit Sharma pulled one from Edwards to the fence, but was caught off a top-edge off the very next one. Suresh Raina was the new batsman in, who had been batting lower down the order to have his place taken by Dhoni at number three, but this time around he did come one-drop. However, the theory that Raina isn’t a great player of short bowling came through again, as he nicked one to the wicket-keeper off Edwards to have the Indians on the mat at 27/2.
Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh tried to resurrect the innings and the run-rate slowed down considerably as India reached 54/3 in 10 overs. Dhoni’s inability to rotate strike meant that even Yuvraj wasn’t at his fluent best till the captain finally cut a ball from Bravo straight to the sweeper fence fielder and the defending champs went deeper down in trouble at 66/4.
Another short ball from Edwards accounted for Yuvraj (67 in 43), but by then he had done his job, and three boundaries in the last three balls helped the Indians to 153/7 with Bravo having picked a four wicket haul.
West Indies lost Andre Fletcher for a duck off Irfan Pathan, and Chris Gayle was slow to get off his mark. In fact, Harbhajan Singh bowled a maiden over to Gayle within the power play as it looked like the West Indies may struggle to face the Indian spinners. It was ironically Gayle’s dismissal that turned the game in their favour, with Bravo coming in at number four and taking on the slower bowlers. He cut, pulled and scooped the ball, both over covers and mid-wicket and did not allow the spinners to settle down as Pragyan Ojha, one of the better Indian tweakers went for 29 runs in his three overs.
At the other end, Simmons gave Bravo good company and the duo looked to be raking up the runs rather easily before Simmons fell to Ojha; West Indies 100/3 in 14.3 and needing 51 in 33 balls.
They did not need all those 33 balls to score the desired runs, as Bravo was joined by the elder statesman Shivnaraine Chanderpaul and the pair some of the best T20I cricket to guide the team to a facile victory. Dhoni’s bowlers had no answers to the questions posed by the Caribbean batsmen and were left licking their wounds.
India now will need to beat both, England and South Africa to have any chance of qualifying for the semi-finals.