India amass highest total against England in T20 series decider
Ahmedabad, Mar 20: Rohit Sharma's sensational 64 and skipper Virat Kohli's well-crafted 80 powered India to a massive 224 for two, their best ever total against England, in the winner-takes-all fifth Twenty20, here on Saturday.
After losing the toss for the fourth time in the series, India were predictably put in to bat by Eoin Morgan.
Preparing themselves for success in all conditions ahead of the T20 World Cup, India thrived under the pressure of a series-decider to produce their best total of the series.
Jofra Archer and Mark Wood had troubled the Indians with their extra pace in earlier games but Rohit and Kohli sent them to the cleaners on way to their 94-run stand.
The other major contributions came from Suryakumar Yadav (32 off 17 balls) and Hardik Pandya (39 not out off 17 balls).
The hosts hammered 67 runs in the last five overs to give the innings a perfect finish.
Barring Ben Stokes and Adil Rashid, all England bowlers leaked more than 10 runs per over with Chris Jordan (0/57) being the most expensive.
India decided to drop opener K L Rahul to accommodate an extra bowling option in left-arm pacer T Natarajan for the all important game.
With no Rahul at the top, Virat Kohli moved himself up the order to open with Rohit. The move worked wonders with Kohli and Rohit sharing a 94-run stand off 54 balls.
Rohit did the bulk of the scoring in their partnership as Kohli was more than happy to enjoy a sensational display of stroke-making from the other end.
Rohit, who was rested for the first two games and did not get much in the next two, enhanced his reputation of a big match player on Saturday.
Most of his five sixes were his trademark shot, the seemingly effortless pull over deep square leg. Also a treat to the eye were his rasping straight drives off a seriously quick Mark Wood in his first over.
Kohli too pulled Wood into the stands, a shot that got him fully pumped up.
It was not entirely a surprise that Rohit got to his fifty with a maximum before playing one on to his stumps off Stokes.
As Kohli paced his innings beautifully at the other end, he had the company of a supremely confident Suryakumar, who carried on from where he left in his debut game.
The Mumbai batsman further increased the intensity of the innings with two consecutive sixes off leggie Adil Rashid. Then he toyed with pacer Jordan with three fours in a row with his scoop shot reminding of his exploits in the IPL. That over went for 19, taking India to 133 for one in 12 overs.
Kohli then partnered with Hardik to get India past 200.
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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.
