IND vs WI 2nd T20I: The Indian Cricket team will be on a task when they face West Indies in the second T20I of the series at Providence Stadium in Guyana. The Men in Blue suffered a four-run loss in the opening T20I at the Brian Lara Academy on Thursday. Captain Hardik Pandya backed the team after the loss, stating that a young team will make mistakes.
The five-match series now moves to Providence Stadium in Guyana, the venue which has hosted T20Is since April 2010. The stadium last hosted a T20I contest in July 2022, which was a contest between West Indies and Pakistan. West Indies have played at the venue the most, while India have not featured much at the venue. The Men in Blue have played just one game at the venue and that came against the hosts Windies in August 2019.
West Indies vs India T20I 2019
India's only match at the venue came against West Indies on August 6, 2019. Virat Kohli's India faced Carlos Brathwaite-led West Indies and the Men in Blue bowled first. The Windies managed to get 146/6 in the first innings on the back of a fifty from Kieron Pollard and a quickfire 32 from Rovman Powell. In reply, Virat Kohli and Rishabh Pant played an instrumental role in helping India win by 7 wickets in 19.1 overs. Kohli made 59, while Pant scored 65. However, Deepak Chahar produced a magical spell, taking three wickets for four runs. He was named Player of the Match.
In the 2023 series, a second-string Indian team suffered an upset in the first T20I in the ongoing five-match series against West Indies. They failed to chase down the target of 150 even after a terrific debut from Tilak Varma, who made 39 off 22 balls. India's captain reflected on the game. "We were right in the chase and quite comfortable there. We made some errors which costed us the game which is fine. A young team will make mistakes.
We will grow together. Throughout the game, we were in control of the game which was the positive in this game. Good four games coming ahead. In T20 cricket, if you lose wickets, it becomes difficult to chase down any total, that's exactly what happened. A couple of hits can change the momentum towards you. When we lost a couple of wickets, that halted our chase," Pandya said after the match.
