Jos Buttler's unbeaten knock of 83 off 38 followed by Chris Jordan's hat-trick helped England to register a 10-wicket win against the United States in the Super Eight of the ongoing T20 World Cup 2024 which was played at Kensington Oval, Bridgetown, Barbados. With this dominating win England became the first team to seal their berth into the semifinal of the marquee event.
Buttler smashed six fours and seven sixes, five of them coming against left-arm spinner Harmeet Singh in the ninth over, as England shot out the paltry 116-run target in 9.4 overs.
Asked to bat first, the USA had a torrid start of the innings with Reece Topley making an inroad in the first over by removing dangerous Andries Gous (8). Steven Taylor and Nitish Kumar tried to make the most of the powerplay with a 34-run stand for the second wicket before Sam Curran gave the second breakthrough to the USA in the sixth over. Taylor departed after scoring 12 off 13 balls. USA were 48/2 after the end of the powerplay.
US skipper Aaron Jones joined Nitish in the middle but the duo failed to put up a big partnership as Adil Rashid clean bowled the former for 10 runs in the ninth over.
Nitish too fell prey to Adil Rashid in the 11th over and departed after scoring 30 runs. Cory Anderson's stay in the middle gave some respite to the side as he stitched two crucial partnerships of 21 and 27 with
Milind Kumar (4) and Harmeet Singh (21) respectively in the middle overs.
However, Liam Livingstone broke the partnership with a scalp of Milind in the 14th over. With the wicket of Harmeet in the 17th over, Curran broke the sixth-wicket partnership to dismantle USA's batting.
In the 18th over, Jordan came with all guns blazing to dismiss Anderson (29) before completing his hat-trick with wickets of Ali Khan (0), Nosthush Kenjige (0), and Saurabh Netravalkar (0) on successive balls. The
USA lost their last five wickets without adding a single run to the scoreboard as they finished at 115/10 in 18.5 overs.
For England, Jordan bagged four wickets while Curran and Rashid clinched two scalps each.
Brief Scores:
USA: 115 all out in 18.5 overs (Nitish Kumar 30, Corey Anderson 29; Chris Jordan 4/10, Adil Rashid 2/13, Sam Curran 2/23) lost to England 117 for no loss in 9.4 overs (Jos Buttler 83 not out, Phil Salt 25 not out) by 10 wickets.
With pti inputs
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