DALLAS: Aaron Jones struck an explosive 94 from 40 balls as the United States of America beat Canada by seven wickets in the opening game of the T20 World Cup on Saturday.
Canada made 194-5 in their 20 overs but Jones's magnificent innings, including ten sixes ensured the USA, in their World Cup debut, reached their target with 2.2 overs to spare.
Jones' ten sixes are the second most in a T20 World Cup innings.
USA made a slow start to the run chase as they slipped to 42-2 in the seventh over of the innings with both the openers, Steven Taylor (0) and Monank Patel (16), back in the hut.
However, at this stage, Andries Gous and Jones took charge of the innings and stitched a brilliant match-winning partnership of 131 runs in 58 balls.
Gous scored 65 runs in 46 balls with the help of seven fours and three sixes.
Earlier, Canada's opener Navneet Dhaliwal and middle-order batter Nicholas Kirton scored fifties for Canada to set the platform for a competitive total.
Dhaliwal scored 61 runs in 44 balls with the help of six fours and three sixes. Meanwhile, Kirton added 51 runs in 31 balls which included three fours and two maximums.
Shreyas Movva played a fiery unbeaten cameo of 32 runs in 16 balls to provide impetus towards the backend of the innings.
Ali Khan, Harmeet Singh and Corey Anderson bagged one wicket each.
USA vs Canada is cricket’s oldest rivalry since the first ever international cricket was between these two sides in 1844 at the St George’s Cricket Club in New York.
Canada and USA are in Group A of the T20 World Cup alongside India, Pakistan and Ireland.
Canada: 1 Aaron Johnson, 2 Navneet Dhaliwal, 3 Pargat Singh, 4 Nicholas Kirton, 5 Shreyas Movva (wk), 6 Dilpreet Bajwa, 7 Saad Bin Zafar (capt), 8 Nikhil Dutta, 9 Dilon Heyliger, 10 Kaleem Sana, 11 Jeremy Gordon
USA: 1 Steven Taylor, 2 Monank Patel (capt, wk), 3 Andries Gous, 4 Aaron Jones, 5 Nitish Kumar, 6 Corey Anderson, 7 Harmeet Singh, 8 Shadley van Schalkwyk, 9 Jasdeep Singh, 10 Ali Khan, 11 Saurabh Netravalkar
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