Chennai, February 13 What turned the game in their favour was batting with the right intent and making every effort to grind out runs on a difficult wicket, said United States captain Monank Patel after his side ended a two-match losing streak with a commanding 93-run win over the Netherlands in a T20 World Cup clash here on Friday.
With the ball holding up and arriving late onto the bat, it was a challenging outing, but USA batters Saiteja Mukkamalla (79 off 51 balls) and Shubham Ranjane (48 not out off 24) turned adversity into advantage, powering the side to a more-than-sufficient 196 for 6.
Left-arm spinner Harmeet Singh, who was named Player of the Match, then troubled the Netherlands batters with a superb spell of 4 for 21, as they were bowled out for 103, handing the USA a comprehensive victory.
"Batting first wasn't easy, the wicket was holding, but we showed the intent. Initially, we wanted to assess the pitch. As soon as we knew, we wanted to make sure we punished the bad balls, showed the intent and put them (opponents) under pressure," said captain Monank after the match.
"We prepared really well in the warm-up games. We learned a lot from the first two games (which USA lost narrowly)," he added.
Monank said that after opener Shayan Jahangir was dismissed for 20, he immediately signalled that a total in the region of 170 would be par, backing the USA spinners to have the quality to stifle the Netherlands batters within that target.
"After Shayan got out, the message I sent was that it was a 170 pitch with the quality of spinners we had," he said.
He added that once spinner Harmeet Singh noticed the ball was holding up, his experience came into play, allowing him to effectively exploit the conditions on the pitch.
"It was very simple for him (Harmeet), as soon as he saw the ball was gripping a bit. He has the experience and skills to spin the ball, he varied the pace. Credit to him," added Monank.
Player of the Match Harmeet said the focus was entirely on extracting maximum turn from the pitch after noticing its slow nature, and the plan worked to perfection.
"When I first saw the wicket, the ball was holding quite a bit. The plan was looking to spin the ball. In the Powerplay, it did grip from ball one. It was more like a one-day plan. The chat we had in the mid-innings was there is assistance when you look to spin the ball," he said.
On the team's chances of advancing to the Super 8s, he said the team will keep fighting.
"Funny things happen. We keep trusting, we keep fighting. The first two games were close ones... We've shown the world what we can do," Netherlands skipper Scott Edwards, whose team suffered their second defeat in three games, said his side would regroup and focus on their upcoming match against India on February 18 in Ahmedabad.
"We obviously travel again tomorrow. We'll have a debrief, a day off, then reset," he said.
