England beats India in 2nd T20 despite debut by 15-year-old Sooryavanshi

Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

Ja­cob Bethell helped Eng­land spoil the in­ter­na­tion­al de­but by teenage In­dia sen­sa­tion Vaib­hav Soorya­van­shi on Sat­ur­day with a four-wick­et win in the sec­ond Twen­ty20.

At age 15 years, 99 days, Soorya­van­shi usurped Sachin Ten­dulkar as his coun­try’s youngest men’s play­er and marked the oc­ca­sion with two blis­ter­ing six­es as he scored 14 from 10 balls.

But it was Bethell, a com­par­a­tive vet­er­an at 22, who made the match-win­ning con­tri­bu­tion at Old Traf­ford.

With Eng­land chas­ing 191 for vic­to­ry, he came to the crease at 51-3 and pro­duced a per­fect­ly paced 76 not out to car­ry the hosts to a 1-0 lead in the five-match se­ries.

Bethell hit the but­ton in a game-chang­ing 17th over, smash­ing two free hits for six af­ter back­foot no-balls from Ravi Bish­noi, who leaked 29 to put Eng­land in con­trol.

Bethell hit five fours and five six­es in his 46-ball stay, fin­ish­ing the game along­side Jofra Archer as Eng­land nailed a four-wick­et win with an over to spare.

Open­ing the bat­ting in place of San­ju Sam­son, Soorya­van­shi walked out in front of a ma­jor­i­ty In­di­an crowd in Man­ches­ter and a prime­time evening tele­vi­sion au­di­ence in Mum­bai.

His first op­po­nent was an­oth­er T20 debu­tant, Josh Tongue, 13 years old­er but with 13 few­er T20 ap­pear­ances. Soorya­van­shi missed his first two balls and got off the mark with a sketchy in­side edge that pinged past his off stump.

That brought him up against his Ra­jasthan Roy­als team­mate Archer and he du­ly an­nounced him­self by stoop­ing low to send a re­mark­able stroke spi­ralling high over his left shoul­der for six. He was at it again off his sev­enth de­liv­ery, launch­ing Tongue in­to the stands over wide long-on.

With no re­al spin on of­fer and the field up, Will Jacks got the bet­ter of the young­ster. Charg­ing down the track, Soorya­van­shi lost his bal­ance as he tried to a club a flat, leg-stump de­liv­ery off his pads to leave Jos But­tler a sim­ple stump­ing.

While the Soorya­van­shi show played out, Ab­hishek Shar­ma was busy ham­mer­ing the li­on’s share of a 50-run stand. In a near re­play of the pre­vi­ous match in Durham, Shar­ma was be­gin­ning to look un­touch­able when the in­tro­duc­tion of Sam Cur­ran forced the er­ror, al­beit with a low full toss that was pumped straight to deep mid­wick­et to cut Shar­ma short on 43.

Cur­ran picked up two more wick­ets, the dan­ger­ous Is­han Kis­han for 49 and Shiv­am Dube for 5, and could have im­proved on fig­ures of 3-33 had Archer’s at­tempt­ed catch off Tilak Ver­ma not been ruled out.

Eng­land’s in­nings came un­stuck im­me­di­ate­ly, Ar­shdeep Singh get­ting open­ers Phil Salt and Jos But­tler caught for ducks in the first over of the chase.

Har­ry Brook em­barked on a vi­o­lent coun­ter­at­tack worth 39 in 15 balls. His sal­vo in­clud­ed four fours and three pow­er­ful six­es in a row as he brought Singh back to earth with a bump.

Need­ing 49 from 24 balls as the endgame loomed, Eng­land was still sec­ond favourite un­til Bish­noi fell apart and Bethell cashed in ruth­less­ly in the 17th. —MAN­CHES­TER, Eng­land (AP)