India U-19 breeze past Kuwait U-19 in Asia Cup opener
India U-19 put up a convincing performance to record a victory in their first match of this year’s Asia Cup in what was a rain-curtailed match. The bowlers put up a disciplined display to restrict Kuwait to an easily chaseable score before Arjun Azad’s innings lead them to victory.
Rain played spoilsport on Thursday in Colombo in the first match of the latest edition U-19 Asia Cup but ultimately the match was played out that saw India start their campaign on a highly-positive note.
The toss had to be delayed by quite some time before play was allowed to begin as the verdict came from the match official that the ODI will be curbed to a 23-over per side game. India won what was a crucial toss considering the conditions and decided to send Kuwait in to bat first on the damp pitch.Â
Openers Meet Bhavsar and Gokul Kumar started out cautiously, as the Men in Blue consistently bowled good lines and lengths to give them little room to score freely. With 15 overs gone and the scoreboard reading only 53, the batsmen needed a quick boost in their run rate which saw the two openers fall within 15 runs of each other.Â
There onwards, Akash Singh and Purnank Tyagi were on the top of their games as they kept chipping in with regular wickets to end up with three each on the day. Vidhyadhar Patil was the only other wicket-taker with a solitary scalp. A late flurry borne out of quick cameos from Abdul Sadiq and Umer Abdullah helped Kuwait post a competitive total of 114/7 after 23 overs.
Even though it looked like a difficult track to bat on, the openers got off to a good start and seemed to make light work of it until Suved Parkar fell in the eighth over after a 35-run stand. However, his partner Arjun Azad kept the crowd entertained with a wide array of exquisite stroke-making that accumulated to an impressive half-century.Â
Even though Kuwait managed to pick another couple of wickets, Azad made sure that he stayed till the end as his unbeaten 60 off 58 balls, laced with five boundaries and two sixes, drove his team to the win.Â
India will play its next match against arch-rivals Pakistan on Saturday before marking an end of the group stage with a clash against Afghanistan just two days later.