USA, West Indies and Namibia begin T20 World Cup campaign with wins

United States of America (USA), West Indies and Namibia began their T20 World Cup campaign with wins over the first weekend of the tournament.

While the US defeated Canada by seven wickets, West Indies went past Papua New Guinea by five wickets and Namibia held nerve to nudge out Oman in the Super Over.

In Dallas, right-handed batsman Aaron Jones’s 94 not out (off 40 balls) led USA to a confident win over neighbours Canada, in what was the debut T20 World Cup match for both sides.

Jones’s quickfire unbeaten 94 along with Andries Gous’s fighting 65 helped USA overcome Canada’s ask of 195 in merely 17.4 overs. This was the third-highest successful run chase in Men’s T20 World Cups, and the highest ever by an Associate team.

After a relatively sedate start, Jones hit his first six in the ninth over delivered by Nikhil Dutta. There was no stopping the right-hand batter after that, as he went after both seamers and spinners in an innings that featured 10 sixes.

These 10 hits equalled the number of sixes Chris Gayle had hit in the inaugural game of the very first T20 World Cup back in 2007. Gayle would go on to break his own record nine years later in 2016, but Jones now has the joint second-most sixes in an innings of a T20 World Cup game, Men’s or Women’s.

In Georgetown, Guyana, Roston Chase and Andre Russell calmed West Indies' fears as they successfully chased down a target of 137, winning by five wickets against Papua New Guinea to give the co-host a winning start to their campaign.

Papua New Guinea had set a reasonable target for them to chase, thanks mostly to Sese Bau (50 off 43 balls) who led the recovery after losing two early wickets to muster 136/8.

In the response, West Indies were perhaps not as assured as they would have liked. They found themselves on 97/5 with just four overs remaining after the loss of Rovman Powell and Sherfane Rutherford - and there were certainly some nerves in the camp.

It was left to Chase (42 not out) and Russell (15) to complete the job, taking Windies to 137/5 in 19 overs.

In Bridgetown, Barbados, David Wiese and Gerhard Erasmus made the most of Bilal Khan's pace and hit four boundaries to take 21 runs off Namibia's allotted Super Over.

After smashing 13 off 4 in the Super Over with the bat, Wiese later starred with the ball for the Eagles, allowing just 10 runs while picking the wicket of big-hitting Naseem Khushi.

Earlier, defending 110, Bilal Khan gave Oman the perfect start, bowling opener Michael van Lingen for a duck off the very second ball of the innings. While both Nikolaas Davin and Jan Frylinck tried to go for their shots, they were troubled by the uneven bounce in the initial stages of the chase.

The duo managed to preserve their wicket despite a number of hits and misses, and Namibia were 32/1 at the end of the powerplay period. Thereafter, skipper Aqib Ilyas employed spinners and medium pacers to take the pace off the ball.

Disciplined spin bowling from Aqib and Zeeshan Maqsood put brakes on Namibia's scoring rate in the middle overs. The equation eventually came to two off one with the aggressive Wiese up against the wily Mehran Khan.

Wiese couldn't connect but the wicket-keeper fumbled the ball, and the batters stole a bye. The game went into a Super Over. Mehran gave merely seven runs for three wickets in his three overs.

(with inputs from ICC)

T20 World Cup, Cricket, USA, West Indies, Namibia