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Saturday, July 12, 2025

Powell pondering top order collapse after Adelaide defeat

by

Sport Desk
516 days ago
20240212
Top order batsman Nicholas Pooran walks off after being dismissed by left-arm seamer Spencer Johnson in the second Twenty20 International in Adelaide, Australia on Sunday.

Top order batsman Nicholas Pooran walks off after being dismissed by left-arm seamer Spencer Johnson in the second Twenty20 International in Adelaide, Australia on Sunday.

ADE­LAIDE – West In­dies cap­tain Rov­man Pow­ell has rued the top or­der col­lapse which sent his side to a 34-run de­feat to Aus­tralia in the sec­ond Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­al in Aus­tralia Sun­day.

Asked to chase an im­pos­ing 242 at the Ade­laide Oval af­ter Glenn Maxwell struck a record-equalling fifth T20I hun­dred, West In­dies slumped to 63 for five in the sev­enth over be­fore re­cov­er­ing to reach 207 for nine off their 20 overs.

The ear­ly wick­ets placed enor­mous pres­sure on the mid­dle and low­er or­der, and even though Pow­ell lashed 63 off 36 de­liv­er­ies and An­dre Rus­sell, a 16-ball 37, West In­dies still found them­selves well short.

“We knew if we were go­ing to get close to this [tar­get] we need­ed to have wick­ets be­cause our top or­der is a lot of pow­er,” Pow­ell said.

“It’s just some­thing we have to think about. Those things do hap­pen when you’re chas­ing 240 – it’s ei­ther you get re­al­ly close or you lose bad­ly.”

West In­dies had start­ed the game well af­ter opt­ing to bowl first, re­duc­ing the home side to 64 for three in the sev­enth over.

How­ev­er, Maxwell en­tered the con­test to blast a dozen fours and eight six­es in a scin­til­lat­ing un­beat­en 120 off 55 de­liv­er­ies, join­ing In­dia’s Ro­hit Shar­ma as the on­ly two bats­men in world crick­et with five ca­reer T20I hun­dreds.

He ripped in­to the West In­dies bowl­ing, reach­ing his fifty off 25 balls and his hun­dred off on­ly an­oth­er 25 balls as the Aussies surged to 241 for four – their high­est-ever T20I to­tal on home soil.

“To be hon­est, it’s very dif­fi­cult [to bowl to Maxwell]. The wick­et is good and he has very good skills,” Pow­ell con­ced­ed.

“Whether you bowl the ball close or you bowl the ball wide, he tends to have a shot for it.

“So he has very good skills and we ac­cept that but I think we still strayed from our plans just a lit­tle bit.

“[Scor­ing] 240, even though the wick­et is good, is a lot of runs. If we can take off 20, 25 off of 240, then we’re pos­si­bly in for a win.”

Even with the se­ries gone fol­low­ing their 11-run de­feat in the open­er in Ho­bart last Fri­day, Pow­ell said West In­dies would be hop­ing to turn the ta­bles in Tues­day’s fi­nal game in Perth.

“A 2-1 se­ries is bet­ter than a 3-0. The guys are still con­fi­dent, the guys are still up­beat we can beat this Aus­tralian team but it is go­ing to take a greater ef­fort from each and every­one of us,” he stressed.

CMC


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