Warning for England as India deliver a thrashing
Morgan’s men beaten by eight wickets in T20I Rahul hits century while Yadav takes five wickets
Swaggering batting and mystery spin delivered the Old Trafford crowd what most of them craved: an emphatic India win to start their two-month tour of England with such style that it invited the question of what glories may lie ahead.
How India will hope for days to come as delightful as this, a gentle cruise in the radiant sunshine. They were so imperious they scarcely even had need for Virat Kohli to bat – though he still had time to seal this crushing victory with a six.
Instead, this drubbing was authored by two stars of the Indian Premier League. First, Kuldeep Yadav, the seventh-highest wickettaker of the 2018 season, flummoxed England with beguiling left-arm wrist-spin.
In India’s reply, Shikhar Dhawan was dismissed cheaply and Rohit Sharma was becalmed, but it mattered not as KL Rahul played an innings befitting a man fresh from 659 runs at 54.91 in the IPL.
He is a product of the new age of Indian batsmanship, combining strokes brimming with orthodox class and luminous timing with easy improvisation.
All of this was in evidence as he reverse-swept Moeen Ali for four and then cleared long-on next ball – on the first occasion, when Rahul had 37, his shot was missed on the boundary by Chris Jordan.
Even more devastating was Rahul’s evisceration of Liam Plunkett. He plundered 20 runs in a five-ball sequence, including two breezy flicks for six, showcasing his extraordinary speed in picking up length. The leap when he reached his second T20I century may be the first of many this summer.
Yet the most obvious point of difference between India and the Australia team England had crushed was wrist-spin. And while England dealt rather better with Yuzvendra Chahal’s leg-spin than in the last T20I between the sides, when he had ravaged them with six for 25, their first experience of facing Yadav was chastening.
If leg-spin is cricket’s most exotic art, left-arm wrist spinners are as rare as Fabergé eggs. There is not a single one playing professionally in England. Even in this age of video footage, data and knowledge-sharing in T20 leagues, the left-arm wrist spinner retains a fundamental allure and unknowableness.
Many of England’s batsmen had not faced a left-arm wrist-spinner of Yadav’s quality before. He was mesmerising, flighting the ball prodigiously and turning it both ways.
Two consecutive googlies – both to batsmen facing their first ball, a Yadav trademark – flummoxed Jonny Bairstow and Joe Root, who both took steps down the track and were stumped: T20 dismissals, but ones so emphatic that a spinner could not hope to better them in a Test. Yadav eventually even defeated Jos Buttler, neatly caught by Kohli attempting a hoick into the sun-kissed sky: his fifth wicket in a match-defining spell of five for 24 that laid waste to the start that Buttler provided. And it was enough to invite the thought of whether Yadav will be unleashed in the Test series to come. It would be great fun — 17 of his 24 deliveries were googlies — though perhaps not for England’s batsmen.
“It’s very difficult to replicate because there is nobody else who bowls like that,” said Eoin Morgan, the second batsman Kuldeep dismissed. “Kuldeep will continue to be a threat. Maybe we can be a bit better. It’s something we’ll assess.”
At least by the time Buttler walked off he had strengthened his claim to be among the world’s best T20 openers: he now has seven fifties in his past eight T20 innings, and 660 runs as a T20 opener in 2018.
Here, yet again, there were moments — the scoop for four to get off the mark against a yorker on middle stump; a flick through square leg that was hit like a double-handed backhand down the line; a reverse-sweep from well outside off stump hit with stupendous power — when it seemed as if Buttler was exploring the limits of modern batsmanship.
It only made the dissonance in Alex Hales’s innings more inescapable. Like a tribute to England in one-day international cricket pre2015, Hales toiled for eight off 18 balls, bereft of timing or rhythm, an innings so out of kilter with the demands of T20 that it effectively cost England 14 runs, according to Cricviz’s analysis.
But confronting a batting line-up as imperious as India’s, England’s 159 for eight felt a lot more than 14 light. It required late striking from David Willey for England to even get that far; as Willey walked off he exchanged words with Kohli.
It could prove a tempestuous summer as well as a long and hot one.