India 172 for 2 (Iyer 102*, Kishan 37*) beat West Indies 171 (Rutherford 56, Dhir 3-31, Axar 2-26) by eight wickets

Hope floats

Having lost his fourth toss of the tour, which also made it 14 tosses out of 17 for Iyer as international captain, Hope again found himself batting at a less-than-ideal time. However, he hadn’t missed a beat since the ODI series in which he hit two centuries. He hit Mayank Yadav for four fours in the second over to take West Indies to 21 for 0.

Arshdeep, Axar pull West Indies back

Arshdeep Singh started pulling West Indies back as he went to yorkers as early as the third over. Axar continued his good run of form with the ball in limited-overs cricket with a fourth over that went for just eight. Arshdeep was asked to continue for a third straight over. Wide yorkers kept coming out. On one of those, international debutant Kamil Pooran played on.

And then Axar dealt the big blow with a maiden over in which two wickets fell. Shimron Hetmyer was unlucky to have his bat bounce up on a dive. It made its first contact with the ground short of the crease so it never landed inside for even a second. Axar followed it up by stifling Rovman Powell, who then picked a straight ball to slog at but still missed it completely. A powerplay of 44 for 3 is usually it in India.

Hope, Rutherford fight

The next five overs produced 56 runs, giving West Indies a second wind. There were two big wins in this period. Rutherford hit two lovely sixes in Kuldeep’s second over, and they also took18 off the 11th over, bowled by Axar. India were now forced to look at their fifth bowler.

Dhir checks in

Dhir, who showed enough control of length in the ODIs, continued doing simple things and benefited from the bigger square boundaries. After Hope hit him for a six third ball into his career, he slowed the ball down and managed to get Hope caught at deep midwicket. When Romario Shepherd took him down, he did the brave thing of tossing the next ball slow and wide, drawing a mishit to long-off. The same trick worked with Shamar Springer, this time the catch going to long-on.

From 100 for 3 in 11 overs, West Indies felt they were short by 20 runs even though they didn’t think it was a 200 kind of pitch.

Spin tests India

Abhishek and Samson came out full of intent, but Roston Chase and Akeal Hosein managed to extract just about enough from the pitch to draw catches from them. At 36 for 2 in four overs, West Indies would have had reason to believe but they were up against a line-up that had Axar batting at No. 8. They needed more testing bowling.

Iyer ends the game

India hit back immediately with Ishan Kishan taking down Chase and Iyer hitting three fours of Joseph to make it 62 for 2 by the end of the powerplay. It seemed like a calculated chase by the halfway point. Iyer was 45 off 25, Kishan 25 off 16, and India needed 70 off the last 10 overs.

All of a sudden, a switch flicked, and Iyer went on a rampage to score 57 of the remaining runs. He hit six sixes in the next 18 balls he faced, taking Matthew Forde for 24 runs in the 14th over. Kishan did his job by turning the strike over, and Iyer just kept smashing flat sixes to bring up his second hundred in Lucknow this year, but first in international T20s.