Bulawayo: Henil Patel’s five-wicket haul helped five-time champions India beat the United States (USA) by five wickets in the ICC Men’s Under-19 World Cup opener at the Queen’s Sports Club on Thursday.
Indian captain Ayush Madre’s decision to field first paid off as his team’s bowling attack dismantled the US batting unit and were reduced to a paltry 107 in 35.2 overs.
Nitish Sudhani’s 52-ball valiant 36 with 4 boundaries remained the highest score for the US, while the top-order pair of Sahil Garg and Arjun Mahesh, Adnit Jamb (18), chipped in with 16 each.
Patel was the pick of India’s bowlers, returning brilliant bowling figures of 5/16 in his seven overs, while Deepesh Devendran, R.S. Ambrish, Kilan Patel and Vaibhav Suryavanshi chipped in with a scalp each.
Patel was adjudged man of the match for his five-wicket haul.
Chasing 108, India suffered a major setback when Rithvik Abidi cleaned up Suriyavanshi (two) in the third over with just 12 runs on the board.
Following an early setback, Vedant Trivedi and skipper Madre anchored India to 21/1 in four overs before rain intervened and halted the course of play for a long time, resulting in the loss of 13 overs.
India were set a revised target of 96 off 37 overs and the five-time champions made the tough yards to reach the total as wicketkeeper batsman Abhiyan Kundu lost two more wickets after a rain interruption before following through.
Kundu top scored for India with an unbeaten 42 off 41 balls with 5 fours and a six. He put on a crucial 45-run partnership for the fourth wicket with Vihaan Malhotra, who scored 18 off 17 balls.
On the US side, Abid took 2 wickets and Rishabh Shimpi and Utkarsh Srivastava took one wicket each.