Aaron Jones: A batter who smashed 10 sixes in the opening game of T20 World Cup 2024

Aaron Jones is an international cricketer from the USA cricket team who has been the talk of the town since the start of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup after playing a match-winning knock in the opening game against Canada, where his team was required to chase a mammoth total of 195 runs in their first-ever T20 World Cup. Despite being a co-host of major events, the USA cricket team was considered underdogs with little international experience. The players were not even regular professionals, as they used to work in corporate jobs and played cricket out of interest and passion.

With the ICC giving a chance to take the Gentlemen’s game to new territories, they decided to give the United States to promote cricket in the American region by hosting the games for the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, along with the West Indies. However, they did not anticipate that their country's team had so much potential that they could beat a test-playing nation like Pakistan with their impeccable skills on the global stage, which shocked and surprised everyone.

The Underdog Who Shocked the World

It all started with a one-man show in the opening game of the tournament against Canada when the debut team chased down 195 runs in Dallas. USA’s middle-order batter Aaron Jones was awarded the Player of the Match Award for his exceptional batting, where he scored 94 runs in just 40 balls, hitting 4 boundaries and 10 sixes in this innings.

He came to bat when his team was 2 wickets down at a score of 43 runs while chasing the target of 196 runs in 20 overs. He formed a crucial partnership of 131 runs with wicket-keeper batsman Andries Gous to take his team to their first win of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2024. During this inning, Aaron Jones broke the record by hitting 10 sixes, the most in an inning.

After this knock, the Caribbean born cricketer became a household name in the cricketing world. However, the journey for the star batter was not easy. At the age of just 19, he came to New York with his Barbadian parents from Barbados on October 19th, 1994, when he was targeting playing for the West Indies national cricket team, as he had already debuted for Combined Campuses in 2016 in the List A format and made his first appearance in first-class cricket for Barbados in 2017.

Despite being called an outsider, he made his place in the USA national cricket team with his skills in October 2018, when he was named in the United States' squad for the 2018 ICC World Cricket League Division Three tournament in Oman. He finished as the leading run-scorer for the United States in the tournament, with 200 runs in five matches.

Seeing his exceptional performance, he was named in the United States' Twenty20 International (T20I) squad for their series against the United Arab Emirates. Within just one year, he made his debut in the ICC tournament for the USA cricket team in the 2019 ICC World Cricket League Division Two tournament in Namibia. Along with that, he was named as one of the six players to watch during the tournament. In just his second match of the tournament, against hosts Namibia, Jones scored his first century in List A cricket, making 103 not out.

To date, the West Indies-born cricketer has represented the USA cricket team in 47 ODIs and 36 T20Is, where he has scored 1,574 runs with an average of 35, including one hundred to his name, and 598 runs, respectively.