The first T20I between India and England was abandoned without a result on Wednesday night as heavy rain came pouring down before the home side could start its reply to the visitors’ 189/7 in 20 overs at the Riverside Ground on Wednesday.
The ground staff brought out the covers and applied them across the square as rain started soon around the time the players walked off the ground at the end of the 20th over of the Indian innings.
The downpour became strong soon after and continued unabated as the players from both sides waited. They waited till 9 pm local time, the cut-off for a five-over game. The umpires finally decided that the match could not restart and called it off. Earlier, thanks to half-centuries from skipper Shreyas Iyer and Abhishek Sharma, along with a late surge from Shivam Dube, India overcame slight drizzle and a gloomy evening to post 189/7 in 20 overs.
On a not-so-easy pitch, Iyer hit his first fifty as India’s T20I captain – his knock of 68 came off 47 balls, laced with six fours and a six. Abhishek, meanwhile, hit 59 off 24 balls studded with six fours and four sixes. Dube applied the finishing touches by hitting 42 not out off just 21 balls, including two boundaries and three sixes.
Sent in to bat, India slipped to 6/2 inside two overs. Sanju Samson fell cheaply again, caught at backward point off Saqib Mahmood, before Ishan Kishan was run out after a mix-up with Abhishek. Abhishek then launched a blistering counterattack, racing to a 20-ball fifty – the fastest by an Indian batter in England – with a flurry of pulls and lofted drives.
Abhishek had become the fastest batter to smash 100 sixes in T20Is and surpassed West Indies’ batter Evin Lewis, who had smashed hundred sixes in 789 deliveries in his career. Agencies