Shreyas Iyer’s 64 and the trio of Ravi Bishnoi, Kuldeep Yadav and Axar Patel spun a web around West Indies as they crashed to 88 run defeat against India in the final T20 International at the Broward County Stadium in Florida on Sunday.
The visitors rested skipper Rohit Sharma, Rishabh Pant, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Suryakumar Yadav and brought in Ishan Kishan, Sanju Samson, Hardik Pandya & Kuldeep Yadav, while the hosts included Brook, Walsh, Smith & Paul in place of Mayers, King, Joseph & Hosein respectively.
Stand in skipper Hardik Pandya won the toss and elected to bat first. The Men In Blue Team opened the innings with Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan.
The latter looked in great touch but perished cheaply for 11, while trying to pull a short of a length delivery from Dominic Drakes to Pooran who ran back from mid-on.
Shreyas along with Deepak Hooda featured in a 76 run stand for the second wicket before the latter (38) mistimed a big hit off Walsh to Brooks at deep midwicket.
Iyer perished soon after, chipping at a full toss from Jason Holder back to the bowler for a 40 ball 64.
Sanju Samson (15) and Dinesh Karthik (12) fell cheaply to Odean Smith. Stand in skipper Hardik (28) provided some lusty blows towards the end to take India to 188/7 in their allotted 20 overs.
For West Indies, Odean Smith was the pick of the bowlers with figures of 3/33.
Chasing 189, Jason Holder who was promoted to open, was cleaned up by Axar Patel in the very first over for a duck.
Shamarh Brooks (13) and Devon Thomas (10) departed cheaply, leaving the hosts in a spot of bother at 33/3.
Kuldeep Yadav who returned into the playing XI, also got into the act immediately by trapping the Windies skipper Nicholas Pooran with a flipper.
The pair of Shimron Hetmyer and Rovman Powell steadied the ship with a 33 run stand for the fifth wicket before Ravi Bishnoi struck twice- first by removing Powell and Keemo Paul leg before wicket as the hosts slumped to 88/6.
Kuldeep then struck again by claiming the wickets of Dominic Drakes and Odean Smith for 1 & 0 respectively.
Shimron Hetmyer’s entertaining 35 ball-56 ended, as he miscued a big hit off leg spinner Bishnoi to Iyer at long off.
The young leggie then wrapped up the innings by dismissing Obed McCoy, caught at long on by Deepak Hooda as the West Indies were bundled out for 100 in 15.4 overs.
India 188 for 7 (Iyer 64, Hooda 38, Smith 3-33) beat West Indies 100 (Hetmyer 56, Bishnoi 4-16, Kuldeep 3-12, Axar 3-15) by 88 runs.