With a brilliant 68 off 41 deliveries, captain Navneet Dhaliwal helped Canada defeat their bitter rivals, the USA, by a margin of 14 runs. After remaining alert during the PowerPlay, Dhaliwal hit a barrage of sixes against the unskilled USA spinners. The USA’s push towards the finish line was halted by the Canada pacers’, particularly Jaskaran Singh Buttar’s, remarkable ability to extract reverse swing right from the 12th over, even though Dhaliwal’s valiant efforts and the timely fireworks of Shreyas Movva and Harsh Thaker helped them reach a competitive total of 184.
Samra Ace and Dhaliwal PowerPlay
Ali Nadeem wasted no time in hitting Saurabh Netravalkar over his head for a maximum off the fourth ball of the innings, demonstrating that Canada was playing with the right attitude. In the second over, Dhaliwal forced himself on the young Ali Sheikh by dragging him around for a couple of leg-side boundaries. With a spectacular direct hit from point at the non-striker’s end to catch Nadeem short of his ground, Sheikh bounced back from that minor setback in the next over. As Canada won the first-six with a score of 54 for 1, Yuvraj Samra dominated the PowerPlay with three boundaries off Netravalkar in the sixth over.
Dhaliwal demands payment from spinners.
In the seventh over, Akhilesh Bodugum was put deep over cow corner, giving him a taste of Dhaliwal’s wrath. In the next over, Samra holed out at long-off, giving Yasir Mohammad the victory in the battle of the match-ups. Movva skilfully used his feet to drill Sheikh for two sixes at long range without the need for sighters. Yasir had a few borders and was on the receiving end of the Dhaliwal storm. However, after the wicketkeeper-batter chipped one straight to point after an attempted reverse sweep, the youthful leg-spinner recovered to have the USA see the back of Movva.
With a series of 6, 4, 6 against Yasir, Harsh Thaker came out firing. Thaker had swept Canada in the middle overs, but he had the final laugh when he skied one to deep-midwicket off the next delivery. Off Bodugum, Dhaliwal continued to cruise in fifth gear while hitting a few more enormous sixes. Dhaliwal missed his best T20I score by two runs after mistiming one off Jessy Singh. Canada was denied the last flourish as Jessy and Netravalkar bowled frugally in the closing overs, allowing only 28 runs to be lost between overs 16–20.
The USA openers continue to rage.
When Kaleem Sana sprayed short and wide in his opening over, Sai Teja Mukkamalla made him pay a severe price. After the first two balls of the innings, Mukkamalla quickly unfurled his offside to play for consecutive boundaries. After Shayan Jahangir scored 17 runs in his opening over, Buttar had a dismal start to the innings. The USA was on a rampage at 37/0 in 2.2 overs when Jahangir continued his charge and clattered Sana for consecutive boundaries in the next over. With two wickets in two overs, Harsh Thaker stopped the United States’ momentum. In an attempt to force the problem in the last over of the PowerPlay, Jahangir holed out at deep midwicket while Mukkamalla skied one to mid-on.
To win, swing in reverse.
Monank Patel, who scored nearly 200 runs in the competition, was unable to replicate his valiant performance against Canada. On the first ball following the powerplay, the USA captain was the victim of an awful mix-up with Milind Kumar. With just seven singles off the next 15 deliveries from Milind and Aaron Jones, the asking rate increased. Jones danced down the track and clobbed Saad Bin Zafar over long-on, breaking the chains. Milind Kumar attempted to slog-sweep Sukhjinder over the cow corner fence in a same manner.
In the 12th over, Canada brought back Buttar, who suddenly began extracting a lot of reverse swing after an expensive first over that went for 17 runs. As he hit Jones in front, his tactic of repeatedly throwing reverse swings into the batters paid off right away. Similar strategies were used by Akhil Kumar, who was fortunate to defeat Milind down the leg side. Sanjay Krishnamurthy made an effort to keep the United States in the thick of things. After making an impressive 24 from 18 balls, Krishnamurthy collapsed while attempting to clear the far leg side of the wicket off Sana. Following the fall of Krishnamurthy, the USA run chase lost momentum and hope. Buttar had a terrible start and finished with final statistics of 2 for 34.
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