Canada’s opening batter Aaron Johnson showed his arrival on the international stage by striking hat-trick boundaries against Ali Khan in the T20 World Cup 2024 opening clash.
Canada was scheduled to face the USA to play the tournament opener on June 2 in Grand Prairie Stadium, Dallas. Though the USA have once beaten Canada by 4-0 with a match abandoned in the 5-match T20I series, Canada has wide exposure to the format of the game.
Winning the toss USA decided to bowl first where Canada’s Aaron Johnson and Navneet Dhaliwal opened the inning. With a motive of setting a higher target Canadian batters made an aggressive start.
Johnson made a confident start in the international event by scoring a boundary on the very first delivery of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2024.
Aaron strikes a hat-trick of boundaries in the 3rd over of the inning bowled by Ali Khan. Navneet Dhaliwal who was on the striker’s end for the first ball made a single and handed the strike to Aaron Johnson.
The right-hander then smashed four back-to-back boundaries and made Ali Khan stumble in his very second over of the tournament. Harmeet Singh in the next over contained the run flow by restricting Aaron with only one boundary.
Following an explosive over, the USA skipper replaced Ali Khan with Jasdeep Singh. While the USA struggled to make a wicket in the powerplay, Harmeet Singh made their dream possible by dismissing Aaron Johnson in the second delivery of the sixth over.
Aaron Johnson’s dance comes to an end after scoring 23 runs from 16 deliveries which includes five boundaries.
In the final delivery of the same over, Navneet Dhaliwal struck the first six of the tournament and finished the powerplay with a score of 50 for 1 wicket.
