Shikar Dhawan's 98 and Krunal's sensational fifty on debut fire India to 317/5
Pune, Mar 22: Shikhar Dhawan delivered under pressure with a solid 98 before Krunal Pandya smashed the fastest fifty by a debutant to fire India to 317 for five in the first ODI against England here on Tuesday.
After Dhawan and Virat Kohli (56 off 60) shared 105 runs for the second wicket, Krunal (58 not out off 31) and K L Rahul (62 not out off 43) sent England on a leather hunt with their unbeaten 112-run stand off 57 balls.
Dhawan hammered 11 fours and two sixes in his 106-ball knock while Krunal plundered seven fours and two maximums in his entertaining innings.
Rahul also got welcome runs after a lean run in the T20 series.
Put into bat here, Rohit Sharma (28 off 42) and Dhawan shared 64 runs for the opening wicket.
Dhawan hammered two successive fours, a square-cut and drive, in the seventh over, while Rohit struck two successive boundaries in the ninth over.
Dhawan, who has lost his place in the playing eleven for T20s, got a life' when hooked over fine-leg to get his fourth boundary.
India were placed at 64/0 after 15 overs. However, Rohit soon perished, after getting an outside edge to wicket-keeper Jos Buttler off Stokes.
Skipper Kohli joined Dhawan and the two rallied the innings.
Kohli got his first boundary, a cover drive, on the 17th ball and was in his elements as he relied on drives and pulls. Dhawan brought up his fifty, with a maximum, a slog-sweep, off 68 balls, in the 24th over, and then changed gears.
Dhawan got another life after Moeen Ali dropped a sitter at deep-mid-wicket off Adil Rashid.
Kohli and Dhawan took on Ali, as the 29th over fetched India 15 runs. Kohli, who raced to his 61st ODI fifty in 50 balls, was dismissed, after he was caught in the deep off pacer Mark Wood (2/75).
India lost their way in the middle overs before Krunal and Rahul went on the offensive. Dhawan pulled one straight to Eoin Morgan at mid-wicket to miss out on a hundred.
INJURY TO BILLINGS, MORGAN
Sam Billings went off the field after hurting his shoulder while trying to save a boundary.
There was another injury scare for England when skipper Eoin Morgan was hit on his finger.
ECB in its update said both batsmen should be able to bat.
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Amazon to make mega-investment of USD 35 billion in India by 2030 across its business
New Delhi (PTI): E-commerce giant Amazon plans to make a mega-investment of USD 35 billion, over Rs 3.14 lakh crore, in India by 2030 across its businesses with a focus on AI-driven digitization, export growth and job creation, a senior company official said on Wednesday.
Making the announcement during the Amazon Smbhav Summit, Senior VP Emerging Markets, Amit Agarwal, said the company has set a target to quadruple exports from India to USD 80 billion from about USD 20 billion it has facilitated as of now and create an additional one million direct, indirect, induced and seasonal jobs by 2030.
"Amazon to date has invested USD 40 billion in India since 2010. Now we will invest another USD 35 billion by 2030 across all our businesses in India," Agarwal said.
Amazon's investment plan is 2 times of Microsoft's investment plan of USD 17.5 billion and close to 2.3 times that of Google's USD 15 billion investment plan by 2030.
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Agarwal said the company has invested USD 40 billion in India to date and is the largest foreign investor in India, according to a Keystone report compiled from publicly available data.
In May 2023, Amazon announced plans to invest USD 12.7 billion in India by 2030 into its local cloud and AI infrastructure across Telangana and Maharashtra. The company has already invested USD 3.7 billion in India between 2016 and 2022.
Agarwal said that the company has invested at scale towards building physical and digital infrastructure, including fulfilment centres, transportation networks, data centres, digital payments infrastructure and technology development.
According to the Keystone report, Amazon has digitized over 12 million small businesses and enabled USD 20 billion in cumulative ecommerce exports, while supporting approximately 2.8 million direct, indirect, induced and seasonal jobs across industries in India in 2024.
To push export growth from India, Amazon launched a manufacturing-focused initiative, "Accelerate Exports", designed to connect digital entrepreneurs with trusted manufacturers while enabling manufacturers to become successful global sellers.
As part of the program, Amazon will host on-ground onboarding drives in over 10 manufacturing clusters across India, including Tirupur, Kanpur, and Surat.
At the Smbhav summit, Amazon announced a key partnership with the Apparel Export Promotion Council of India to expand and scale the program nationwide.
