After staying unbeaten on 84 off 51 balls in just his second T20I game and helping India thrash West Indies by nine wickets in the fourth T20I at the Central Broward Regional Park Stadium on Saturday, India opener Yashasvi Jaiswal said he has intended to express himself and play as per the requirement of the team.
Gill and Jaiswal absolutely bossed the chase of 179 to help India level the series 2-2, with Sunday’s game now a winner-takes-it-all decider.
Jaiswal hit 11 fours and five sixes in his maiden T20I fifty while sharing a 165-run partnership with Gill as India pulled off the highest successful men’s T20I chase at the venue.
“Of course (playing international cricket) is not easy but I just love to go out and enjoy myself. I would love to thank Hardik bhai and the support staff, the way they have spoken really had an impact. I have faced them (Holder and McCoy) many times so I can read them well.”
“I just try to play how the team needs and how I can express myself. I just think of how quickly I can score and how many runs I can get in the powerplay. Of course, reading the wicket and reading the situation (is important), but my intent is always to score runs. It was really amazing (to bat with Gill) and knew which bowlers to take on,” said Jaiswal in the post-match presentation ceremony, upon receiving the Player of the Match award.
Gill and Jaiswal combined power and timing to hit sizzling shots and find boundaries easily against a listless West Indies bowling line-up in their mammoth 165-run opening stand.
The association of 165 runs between Gill and Jaiswal is also the joint-highest opening wicket partnership for India in men’s T20Is, tied with the pair of K.L. Rahul and Rohit Sharma, who had the same amount of runs in their opening stand against Sri Lanka in December 2017.
“Brilliant. As we’ve seen, there’s no doubt in their skillset. They just needed to spend some time between the wickets. Going forward we have to take more responsibility as a batting group and support the bowlers. I’ve always believed bowlers win matches. Yashasvi and Shubman were brilliant. Very pleasing to see,” said India captain Hardik Pandya.
Asked about coming back in the series after losing the first two games, the all-rounder said the side reflected well on where they need to step up for making a comeback in the series, resulting in them now set to play in Sunday’s series decider.
“I like to captain how I see the game. It’s about how the game is going, and I like to go with my instincts. Yes, we lost two games but in the first game, it was our own errors. We were cruising and in the last four overs, we slipped. We spoke about how these kinds of games show our character and the boys took it in their stride.”
“The two games we played reflected that we pull up our socks and we make sure to play some good cricket. In T20 cricket no one’s favourites. You have to turn up and play good cricket. You have to respect the opposition. They were 2-0 up because they played better cricket than us. Tomorrow, we have to turn up and do exactly what we did today,” he concluded.
