Former India player turned veteran commentator Aakash Chopra has applauded Nicholas Pooran for playing a match-winning knock in the second T20I between India and the West Indies and added that very few players in world cricket are as destructive as him. However, India set the West Indies a 153-run target after opting to bat first in Providence, Guyana, on Sunday, August 6. Pooran smashed a 40-ball 67 as the hosts register a two-wicket win with seven deliveries to spare to take a 2-0 lead in the five-match series as well.

In a video shared on his YouTube channel, Chopra said: “The match got settled in the second innings when Nicholas Pooran came. His name is Nicky P and he is my Player of the Match. The form he is in and to maintain that form with this tempo, it just speaks volumes that this player is extremely special. You also feel slightly envious because Suryakumar Yadav is the only player like that in your team, who was maintaining such a form and batting like this. Everyone else, whenever they play, they play well, but very few players in the world have this kind of destructive mode. Nicholas Pooran, at this point in time, is one of the best.”

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However, Nicholas Pooran, who has a career T20I strike rate of 131.84, has been in sublime form lately. The left-handed wicketkeeper-batter smashed an unbeaten 137 off 55 deliveries to help MI New York chase down a 184-run target in just 16 overs in the Major League Cricket final before he joined the Windies team for the ongoing T20I series as well. And, Aakash Chopra praised Nicholas Pooran for playing as per the demands of the situation as well.

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“You generally don’t see variations in a T20 knock, that you hit as well, then you take singles and then you pick it up again. You see this a lot in ODIs, you may start strong, then slow down a little, and then gather pace. So you see those curves but in T20s, the graph mostly goes upwards but that’s not the case with Nicky P,” Aakash Chopra concluded. “When he came, the team was struggling a lot, two wickets had fallen for two runs – Brandon King and Johnson Charles had been dismissed and the team was stuck. Then Kyle Mayers got out but this guy hit at the start and then accumulated runs one by one. He is very good.”