Arshdeep Singh enters Indian cricket's record books, here's why

Left-arm pace bowler Arshdeep Singh produced India’s best-ever spell in T20 World Cup, picking 4/9 in his four overs to lead India to an excruciating but seven-wicket win over United States of America. The win helped India sail into the Super 8s stage of the apex T20 tournament.

Arshdeep picked the wickets of opener Shayan Jahangir, Andries Gous, Nitish Kumar and Harmeet Singh as Rohit Sharma’s boys restricted the US to 110/8 in 20 overs. Hardik Pandya took 2/14 and Axar Patel got 1/25.

India’s innings got off to a poor start with USA left-arm pacer Saurabh Netravalkar removing both openers Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli early.

Rishabh Pant fell a while after as pressure to score against tight bowling mounted on India.

However, Suryakumar Yadav (50 off 49 balls) and Shivam Dube (31 off 35) added unbeaten 72 runs, India’s highest partnership in the ongoing tournament to help them sail through to the next stage. India reached 111/3 with 10 balls to spare, in what is now the highest chase at the venue bettering Pakistan’s 107-run chase against Canada on Tuesday, June 11.

India next play Canada while USA face Ireland in a must-win Group A game.

Arshdeep bettered the 4/11 by R Ashwin against Australia at Mirpur in 2014.    

“I am very happy with the performance. Last two games, I gave away too many but the team has kept backing me. Pitch is helpful for pacers, we’re getting seam movement so we had to hit the right lengths and let the pitch do the rest,” said the 25-year-old from Indian state of Punjab.  

“Here, you can use the wicket more at the death. You can back your execution with yorkers. Bumrah told me to surprise the batsmen.”

USA's stand-in skipper Aaron Jones said, "We were 10-15 runs short. We know if we'd gotten 125-130 it'd have been a tough total. Boys were disciplined today, pleased that the game got close."

Arshdeep Singh, India, USA, T20 World Cup, Cricket