England go from heroes to zeros
FORTUNES have been well and truly flipped. First, an England Test team that couldn’t previously buy a win play like millionaires. Then, their talent-rich Twenty20 equivalents are made to look like paupers by India.
This wasn’t just a series-sealing defeat served up by India at Edgbaston, scene of the outlandishly easy pursuit of a 378-run target by a different England XI just days earlier — it was an absolute thrashing.
It represents the worst possible start to Jos Buttler’s reign as whiteball captain and places flashing neon question marks against previous claims that England’s strength in depth is the envy of the world.
‘I’m very disappointed — but we didn’t play anywhere near well enough to win the game. We got what we deserved,’ said Buttler.
‘We don’t have much time to reflect but we will consider what we’ve got for the next one.’
Indeed, the series concludes with a dead rubber in Nottingham today with few England players enhancing their reputations in the two matches to date. Having lost the first one by 50 runs in Southampton, this time they got one run closer, although the gulf between the sides will be a concern for new coach Matthew Mott three months out from the World Cup.
The game was in the balance at the halfway stage after Richard Gleeson struck three times in the opening spell.
His figures of 4-1-15-3, allied to another solid performance of four for 24 from Chris Jordan, helped limit India to 170 for eight but India showed their prowess with the ball on a used pitch to seal another landslide win.
Jason Roy, who has endured a woeful few days, set the tone by falling to the first ball of the chase, one of three wickets inside the powerplay, and one of five in the first half of a sorry innings.
Roy, who groped his way to four off 16 balls at the Ageas Bowl, had gifted Rohit Sharma a life in the opening over of the match when he floored a low but straightforward chance at point. Sharma showed no such generosity when the roles were reversed and accepted the slip catch created by Bhuvneshwar Kumar.
Buttler topped the Indian Premier League scoring charts earlier this year but succumbed cheaply once more, edging behind off Kumar, and Liam Livingstone, Harry Brook and Dawid Malan were all victims of an onslaught of India’s attack.
Man-of-the-match Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah finished with figures
of 6-2-25-5, and left England allrounders Moeen Ali and David Willey with too much to do in their bid to resuscitate the innings from a position of 55 for five just shy of its halfway mark.
When Matt Parkinson was yorked by Harshal Patel to complete the rout, three overs remained unused.
In a bid to address their woeful death bowling of the past 18 months, England made 34-year-old Gleeson their oldest debutant in any format since Paul Nixon was parachuted into the white-ball internationals in Australia 15 years ago.
But the Lancashire paceman, who did not play professionally until he was 27, wasted no time in making the strongest impression possible at the other end of the innings by accounting for India’s holy trinity of Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Rishabh Pant inside four deliveries to check a rollicking start.
Rohit was cramped for room by a searing delivery that towered into the blue sky before being claimed by wicketkeeper Buttler over his head and having secured the breakthrough with the fifth ball of the fifth over, Gleeson reduced India from 49 without loss to 61 for three at the start of the seventh.
Kohli, who still averages in excess of 50 in this format despite a loss of overall form that has seen him go 75 international innings without a hundred, could only manage a steepling top edge that Malan superbly hauled in.
Pant then inside edged the next delivery to Buttler as Gleeson revelled on what was otherwise a poor day for England. They have won just two of their last nine internationals in this format.
And the lack of confidence and conviction showed as Ravindra Jadeja, one of four changes as India hit full strength, counter-attacked from a position of 89 for five in the 11th over to finish with an unbeaten 46 and a competitive team total.
Faced with a target of 171, England then made it look like the 378 they chased in midweek and India completed another ominous rout through a combination of individual excellence from their new-ball duo and a distracted pursuit from Buttler’s men.