Twitter Reactions: Evin Lewis and Alzarri Joseph star in an easy win for the West Indies
Alzarri Joseph was named the 'Man of the Match'.
As expected, West Indies didn’t have to break a sweat in the first ODI against Ireland. They registered an easy win after the likes of Evin Lewis and Alzarri Joseph brought up special efforts. However, there are a few things that they’d be really disappointed about. The poor performance from the middle-order plus their shot selection is something that the team management would want to address going ahead.
Coming to this game, Ireland won the toss and chose to bat first on a very good batting surface. Yet, they failed to make the most of the opportunity. It wasn’t really that sort of a surface that the batsmen had to be wary. They could comfortably hit through the line and score some big runs. But they seemed to have gotten into a shell and took a too defensive approach. As the pressure built up, the false shots eventually came.
All the top-four batsmen got starts but none could stay in the middle for a long time. All of them fell under 20 runs. Towards the end, Lorcan Tucker and Mark Adair scored handy 31 and 29 runs respectively before the team was bowled out for 180 in 46.1 overs. Alzarri Joseph picked up four wickets while Sheldon Cottrell and Hayden Walsh accounted for two each.
Evin Lewis falls agonisingly short of a well-deserved century
The ever-consistent Shai Hope fell early in the chase for West Indies. He was dismissed by Barry McCarthy for 13 runs. After the fall of the first wicket, there was a good partnership between Evin Lewis and Brandon King. The latter took his time but failed to stay in the middle right till the end. After he crawled his way to 20 off 40 balls, he got out to Simi Singh.
Then, three more wickets fell at regular intervals. The likes of Shimron Hetmyer, Nicholas Pooran and Roston Chase got out to poor shots after getting starts. However, Evin Lewis kept going strong. When 3 more runs were required for the win, he was on 93.
He took a double and then needed to hit a six to complete his ton. But he could only get a four and remained unbeaten on 99. West Indies, though, completed the chase in 33.2 overs with 5 wickets to spare.
Here is how Twitterati reacted:
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