T20 World Cup 2024: India win against USA by 7 wickets in yet another low-scoring encounter

Home side were restricted to 110-8 as Men in Blue lost openers Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma early on

In a pivotal T20 World Cup showdown on Wednesday, India won by seven wickets against USA in New York as the home side put up a target of 111 after losing eight wickets. Arshdeep Singh was awarded the Player of the Match for his exceptional 9-4 in his four overs.

"Very, very happy with the performance. In the last two games, I gave a little more runs and wasn’t very happy with that. But the team always showed belief in me, so I had to deliver for them,” he said. The wicket is very different for fast bowlers and it’s helping us get some seam moment, so the plan was simple...just let the ball do the talking. That was the talk in the dressing room that don’t give easy balls to score runs because our batsmen are also facing the difficulties to score runs. The plan was to hit the hard lengths and see what the wicket helps,” Singh said after receiving the award.

Initially, the Men in Blue struggled as both openers Captain Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli departed early. However, Suryakuar Yadav developed a good partnership with Shivam Dube and contributed with a half century to take India over the line.

Earlier, during the USA's innings, Indian pacers Jasprit Bumrah and Mohamad Siraj went for 25 runs each in their four overs. Hardik Pandya stepped up to support Singh with 14-2 in his four overs. During the post-match ceremony, Sharma mentioned that the USA game played out much the same way as the other two games in New York.

“We knew it was going to be a tough task to score that many runs on the board. We lost some wickets up front, but credit to take the game to the end. A lot of these USA guys we played cricket together [at youth-team level] and I’m very happy to see them progress. They are going from strength to strength and making progress. We knew that bowlers had to take the lead. We knew run scoring is difficult on this pitch. It is a big relief [to qualify]. Playing cricket here wasn’t easy. All three games could have been anyone’s game, and you had to stick to the end and take the game as deep as possible. We can take a lot of confidence from this,” he added.

On the other hand, USA Captain Aaron Jones said, "I would say we were 10-15 runs short on the wicket; 125-130 would have been a tough total,” he told the post-match ceremony. The boys were pretty disciplined today. It was really pleasing for me for the bowling unit to bring the game so close. We want more fans for USA cricket and we’ve been talking about it a lot over the years and we are trying to enjoy it. We will regroup and come hard for Ireland for sure”.USA batters failed to perform under the tricky conditions at the challenging Nassau County International Cricket Stadium as they kept losing wickets. The only batsmen to stand out were opener Steven Taylor for his contribution of 24 and Nitish Kumar with his 27, the highest for the side.

With this win, India retained its spot at the top of the table in Group A and secured a place in the Super Eights. Meanwhile, Australia and South Africa have already qualified for the second round of the tournament.