Bridgetown (Barbados): England captain Jos Buttler smashed a blazing 83* off 38 balls to register a commanding 10-wicket win against the USA in the Super Eight match to secure a semi-final spot in the T20 World Cup on Sunday.
Chasing a modest target of 116, Buttler and Phil Salt took two overs to understand the conditions before unleashing their true potential.
In the third over, Buttler made his intentions clear with two giant sixes off Saurabh Netravalkar. he carried the momentum in the powerplay overs and guided England to 60 with his clean-hitting prowess.
Just before his half-century, Buttler shifted to top gear and amassed five consecutive sixes off Harmeet Singh in the ninth over to take England to the 100-run mark.
Buttler struck a boundary off Shadley van Schalkwyk’s second over to take the defending champions over the line in just 9.4 overs. He remained unbeaten on 83* studded with seven sixes and six fours while Salt scored 25 not out.
Earlier, Chris Jordan clinched a hat-trick to all out the USA for 115.
Jordan, who replaced Mark Wood in the playing 11, became the first England player to take a hat-trick in a T20 World Cup match. He became the second bowler after Pat Cummins to bag a hat-trick in the ongoing tournament. Cummins bagged two consecutive hat-tricks for Australia in this edition of the T20 World Cup.
Invited to bat first, the USA had a torrid start of the innings with Reece Topley making an inroad in the first over by removing dangerous Andries Gous (8).
Steven Taylor and Nitish Kumar tried to make the most of the powerplay with a 34-run stand for the second wicket before Sam Curran gave the second breakthrough to the USA in the sixth over. Taylor departed after scoring 12 off 13 balls. USA were 48/2 after the end of the powerplay.
US skipper Aaron Jones joined Nitish in the middle but the duo failed to put up a big partnership as Adil Rashid clean bowled the former for 10 runs in the ninth over.
Nitish too fell prey to Adil Rashid in the 11th over and departed after scoring 30 runs. Cory Anderson’s stay in the middle gave some respite to the side as he stitched two crucial partnerships of 21 and 27 with Milind Kumar (4) and Harmeet Singh (21) respectively in the middle overs.
However, Liam Livingstone broke the partnership with a scalp of Milind in the 14th over. With the wicket of Harmeet in the 17th over, Curran broke the sixth-wicket partnership to dismantle USA’s batting.
In the 18th over, Jordan came with all guns blazing to dismiss Anderson (29) before completing his hat-trick with wickets of Ali Khan (0), Nosthush Kenjige (0), and Saurabh Netravalkar (0) on successive balls. The USA lost their last five wickets without adding a single run to the scoreboard as they finished at 115/10 in 18.5 overs.
For England, Jordan bagged four wickets while Curran and Rashid clinched two scalps each.
Brief scores: England 117/0 in 9.4 overs (Jos Buttler 83*, Phil Salt 25*; Nosthush Kejige 0-19) defeated USA 115/10 in 18.5 overs (Nitish Kumar 30, Corey Anderson 29; Chris Jordan 4-10, Adil Rashid 2-13) by 10 wickets.
–IANS