T20 World Cup 2024

First, Australia was well on the right keel towards victory with Travis Head bashing 76 off 43 balls. But Kuldeep Yadav's 2-24—of which the key wicket of Glenn Maxwell was while the score was 114/4—and then Arshdeep Singh's 3-37 mean Australia would only finish their innings at 181/7 and falling a few runs short of the target.

West Indies struggled early, losing Shai Hope and Nicholas Pooran cheaply, but Kyle Mayers and Roston Chase revived their innings with an 81-run partnership for the third wicket. Tabraiz Shamsi's breakthrough by dismissing Mayers and subsequent strikes by Keshav Maharaj and himself halted West Indies' progress. Despite Chase's resilient 52 off 42 balls, supported briefly by Andre Russell's late flourish, West Indies could only manage 135/8, with Shamsi finishing with figures of 3-27.

“Well done, Brother. Better team on the day. You boys are an inspiration for so many back homes and abroad. So sad we can’t see you all play in Australia,” Khawaja posted on X.

Naib proved to be instrumental at Arnos Vale Stadium with figures of 4-20. He turned in a match-winning spell, four continuous overs, in which he removed Marcus Stoinis and Tim David, then got the important wicket of Glenn Maxwell for 59 runs in the 14th over, which seemed to signal the end of Australia's hopes of winning.

This was announced by India's fielding coach T Dilip, who brought out reasons ranging from the iconic status Richards enjoys in the cricketing world to his association with fearless playing and charisma on the field. Dilip termed Richards a game-changer who epitomizes the pursuit of greatness in a video shared by the BCCI on social media.

India, after being asked to bat first, saw Hardik Pandya smash an unbeaten 50 off 27 balls, featuring four fours and three sixes, while Virat Kohli added 37 runs to lead the team to 196/5 in 20 overs.

“Personally if you ask me in the Caribbean it’s one or two games – when England chased that 180. Other than that batting first has been the trend for most of the teams and they have been very successful. So, if you look at the stats, ideally you would have batted first, but maybe the captain and coach thought otherwise,” Shakib stated at the post-match press conference.