WT20 Top player of the day: Semi-final 1- England vs New Zealand - Jason Roy

England beat New Zealand by seven wickets and are in the finals of the World T20. New Zealand had a rough day today. They were off to a good start with Guptill taking the lead and smashing 3 boundaries. Breakthrough came in the form of Guptill’s wicket. 

Williamson and Munro put a good stand together but in the end Williamson perished to a miss timed slog sweep. Munro was standing tall in the other end joined by Corey Anderson with last minute efforts to hold the team together. 

The middle order of the New Zealand side perished too soon making the job of winning a bit easy for the England side. They managed to get a reasonable score of 153/8 in 20 overs.

England came on pitch with a good comeback effort by their bowlers. They started off in a swan song with Roy taking the Black Cap bowlers to the cleaners. He smashed 78 from 44 balls which put England in the driver’s seat. 

By the time his wicket had fallen to Sodhi England was very close to getting into the finals. Buttler finished the game off with a massive 6 for England sending their team all the way into the finals with 17 balls remaining.

Jason Roy said, "The bowling unit did really well, they are a hugely dangerous line-up. I tried to get the team off to a good start and it went quite well. It was a chance to get off to a great start on a decent wicket. I gave it a crack and it came off. I got a few boundaries early and kept going from there."

Roy made the intention of the England team very clear from the first ball. They piled up pressure on the bowlers and made the target look relatively easy. This is a whole new team compared to the last T20 World Cup. 

The Feroz Shah Kotla pitch was said to be favouring the English side much before the game had even started. But the performance of the New Zealand players was disappointing. Their middle order batting failed to come up with any sort of shots to support them. This in turn led to their bowlers bowling under tremendous pressure which went well for Roy and England.

England captain Eoin Morgan said, "We did really to peg it back after the first six or seven overs, Kane played really well and his wicket was very important. Continuing to take wickets helped us a huge amount."

It looks like the England team means business and it will be a tough task for those who qualify from the other semis (West Indies vs India) to stop this side.

Brief Scores: New Zealand 153/8 in 20 overs (Munro 46 (32), Williamson 32 (28) and Stokes 28 for 3) lost to England 159/3 in 17.1 overs (Roy 78 (44), Buttler 32 (17) and Sodhi 42 for 2)