With West Indies requiring 60 runs off the last 36 balls, Brandon King and Akeal Hosein’s valiant partnership of 56 runs pushed India to the edge. Yuzvendra Chahal and Prasidh Krishna’s death-over bowling kept the men in blue in the game, but West Indies stood just 15 runs away from pulling off a record run chase of 309 on Friday in the opening match of the three-match ODI series in Port of Spain.
But Mohammed Siraj nailed some pin-point yorkers in the final over as India scripted a thrilling three-run win to take a 1-0 lead in the series. However, for Yuzvendra Chahal, it was Sanju Samson’s stunning wicketkeeping effort that made the difference. In the fifth ball of the final over, Romario Shepherd shuffled across to the leg side. Siraj followed him and delivered it down to the leg side but it went for a wide.
With India needing eight runs of the last couple of deliveries, the wide delivery from Siraj, which looked set to go towards the boundary, would have reduced the equation to 3 off 1. However, Samson followed the delivery as well and churned out an incredible =effort to his left to stop the boundary. Recalling the final over after the nail-biting win, Chahal hailed Samson’s incredible boundary-saving effort.
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With 10 needed off 3 balls, the tension was rising. It was seen in the dressing rooms as well. Head coach Dravid was seen having an animated discussion with batting coach Vikram Rathour while a youngster. Ishan Kishan was busy cheering Siraj. Barely a few metres to the left of India’s dressing room, the West Indies players were also not far behind. Upbeat by the streaky boundary, they were egging Shepherd on to hit the winning runs.
Here is the video of the incident:
No shortage of action & emotions! 🔥 👌
🎥 Scenes as #TeamIndia seal a thrilling win in the first #WIvIND ODI in Trinidad 🔽 pic.twitter.com/rkpiPi3yOQ
— BCCI (@BCCI) July 23, 2022
Talking about the post-match presentation, Yuzvendra Chahal said, “We had full faith in Siraj and that we can defend five runs in the last over as he was bowling his yorkers very well… He missed hardly one or two yorkers earlier. But yes, a little bit of pressure is always there, given the way they were batting. Sanju (Samson) stopped a certain boundary off a wide, and that raised our confidence.”
Yuzvendra Chahal himself had picked a couple of wickets out of six that fell in the second innings as India restricted West Indies to 305.
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Chahal elaborated, “There was not much pressure, because if you look at the team overall, almost everyone has played a lot of first-class matches, they have gained so much experience from the IPL, so you can’t say the bowling line-up was inexperienced.”
