India hammered West Indies in the first T20I after whitewashing the home team in the ODIs. The Men in Blue came up with clinical performance in all departments to subject West Indies to a 68-run loss on their home soil. There were many talking points from the match, but one instance that has caught the eye of many is Ravichandran Ashwin almost getting run out.
The incident happened in the 18th over when Dinesh Karthik and Ashwin were tasked with getting India to a respectable score. Karthik hit a ball towards long off and called for two runs. Ashwin seeing the ball, arrived at the bowler’s end and dived in to get into the non-striker’s crease. The run was completed without fuss, but on replay, it could be seen that Ashwin was way out of his crease when bowler Obed McCoy collected the ball and could have easily dislodged the bails to run Ashwin out. But he did not!
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The bizarre incident has still not found an answer. Some suggest that McCoy would have though thought that Ashwin has completed the run and so chose to not dislodge the bails.
Ashwin and Karthik remained unbeaten on 13 and 41, respectively, and were instrumental in taking India to a mammoth 190 at the end. Earlier, captain Rohit Sharma had led the way with an important half-century (64 off of 44).
The Indian bowlers were all over the West Indies batters in the second innings. Arshdeep Singh playing in just his second T20I came up with another quality performance and is surmounting a great challenge to a T20I World Cup spot. The Madhya Pradesh bowler took two wickets, with Ashwin and Ravi Bishnoi coming up with two of their own.
West Indies could not get going and only managed 122/8 in the end. The home team lost the match by a huge 68 runs in what came as a surprise to many since West Indies are a good T20I team. Both teams would lock horns in the second match of the series on 1st August in St Kitts.
