Belfast [Ireland], June 27 (ANI): As Ireland defeated India in the first T20I of the two-match series, their first win against Men in Blue across all formats, it marked a hat-trick of T20 World Cup champions going down in their next match after winning the trophy.
Ireland made their name in the history books, as a shocker batting collapse while chasing 183 from India saw the two-time, back-to-back T20WC champions crumble to a 34-run defeat in Belfast.
This is the third time a T20 World Cup winner has gone down to a team just a match after winning the title. In 2022, England went down to Bangladesh by six wickets and, in fact, lost the whole series by 3-0.
After a Rohit Sharma-led India won the title back in 2024, they went down to Zimbabwe in their next match. Shubman Gill led a young and inexperienced Team India as they went down to 102/9 and failed to chase down 116 runs. India, however, won the series by 4-1.
With the Irish series just limited to two T20Is, India have very limited space to react, urgently needing to level the series on June 28th before they take on England away from home in five T20Is from July 1 onwards. The ‘Captain Shreyas Iyer’ era has started off roughly for India.
Ireland was put to bat first by India and was guided to 182/9 by Tucker (50 in 36 balls, with five fours and two sixes) and Gareth Delany (49 in 32 balls, with three fours and three sixes).
India started off well, reaching the 50-run mark in just the fourth over, with Abhishek Sharma (49 in 20 balls, with seven fours and two sixes) impressing. However, impressive bowling from Matthew Hollard (3/28), Matthew Humphreys (3/38) and Jai Moondra (2/26) totally unravelled India’s batting as it collapsed from 45/1 to 148 all out, with the final five wickets going down for 48 runs. (ANI)
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