Twitter Reactions: Jonny Bairstow and Tom Curran help England take an early lead in the series

A slightly tricky surface greeted the Windies and England teams when they took each other on in the first T20I. Batsmen didn’t find it very easy to bat and there were two dominating performances, one each from both the teams. Jonny Bairstow, for England, played a sublime knock and registered his highest T20I score.

His efforts managed to overpower a highly entertaining innings from Nicholas Pooran in the Windies’ innings. The bowling from the Brits, Tom Curran and Chris Jordan in particular, was great to watch. The former picked up a four-wicket haul in the match and thus helped restrict the Windies to a mediocre total in the first innings.

Nicholas Pooran comes to the rescue

The hosts lost the toss and were put into bat first. However, they failed to get an ideal start to the innings in the powerplay. With Shai Hope, Chris Gayle and Shimron Hetmyer dismissed for 6, 15 and 14 runs respectively, the side was down to 37/3 after 5 overs. Then Darren Bravo tried to build a partnership with Nicholas Pooran.

The former crawled to 28 off 30 balls before he was dismissed. One wicket brought another as Carlos Brathwaite got out in successive overs for a duck. Pooran, though, kept his calm and registered his second T20I fifty. Unfortunately, he got out at the wrong time in the 18th over after scoring 57 off 36. The Windies batsmen went hard in the last few overs, milked 32 runs in the last three and finished with a below-par total of 160/8.

Jonny Bairstow goes aggressive in the powerplay

England came out with an intent to go hard after the bowlers when the field restrictions were on. Alex Hales got off to a flyer before he was dismissed for 11 off 5 balls. Jonny Bairstow faced half the deliveries in the first six overs and scored 33 runs. Despite Joe Root getting out for a duck and Eoin Morgan scoring only 5 runs from 11 balls in this phase, England scored 62 runs in the first six overs.

Windies, however, pulled things back beautifully. Morgan’s stay in the middle was a struggle. Bairstow, after mustering up 68 runs, was dismissed in the 12th over. But, he laid the platform for his team to finish the chase easily. Almost a run-a-ball 30 and 18 from Joe Denly and Sam Billings respectively got England closer to the target and they managed to finish the chase in 18.5 overs.

Windies will rue the four dropped chances in the match. Bairstow was put down twice when he was on 34 and 52. This sloppy work from the Caribbean team might have cost them the game and the fans sure didn’t enjoy it. Though, the England fans had fun watching Jonny Bairstow smash the bowlers all over the park.

Here is how Twitterati reacted:

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