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India tried to make hay, and succeeded in making history. They have never lost a T20 like this, not even nearly. England prevailed by the ludicrous margin of 125 runs, fully 45 more than their opponents’ previous record defeat, after shredding the most feared batting side in world cricket for just 76 runs and in fewer than a dozen overs.
“It was atrocious,” the India captain, Shreyas Iyer, said. “We played awful cricket.” And their innings had started so well.
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi sent the sixth ball flying over deep third. The first ball of the second over, a full toss, was carted over point by Abhishek Sharma, the third launched by Sooryavanshi off his pads and over deep square leg. Nine balls bowled, 22 runs scored, ball deposited into the crowd three times. At this point India were all about the sixes. Soon they were at sixes and sevens.
All the pre-match talk had been of how ideal this surface would be for batting, on a traditionally high‑scoring ground and with a dry, lightning‑fast outfield, but England struggled for much of their innings and set India an apparently achievable target of 202. In trying to blast their way to victory, they blundered their way to defeat.
While admitting that some of their more experienced players “needed to adapt and play according to the situation”, Gautam Gambhir, the India head coach, insisted his side’s approach had been right. “Sometimes when you play a high‑risk, high‑reward game these things can happen, you get bundled out,” he said.
“That’s what has made us successful and we’ll try to continue to play the same way. We’ve always believed that in a T20 it’s all about going out there and expressing yourself, and sometimes you do get the results and sometimes you don’t.”
As their evening unravelled India’s batters simply refused to keep the ball on the ground, at least until their chances of victory were themselves subterranean. A run chase that might have been a stroll was instead punctuated with head-spinning regularity by batters walking, dolefully, back towards the dressing room. Only three of England’s overs did not feature at least one dismissal.
Abhishek was the first to go, picking out Phil Salt at deep point in the second over to become the first of Josh Tongue’s four wickets. In the third over Sooryavanshi swished at Jofra Archer’s bouncer and gloved the ball behind. That India’s boy wonder has after just two appearances already top-scored for his side is not surprising; that he did so with just 13 is remarkable.
Ishan Kishan equalled him, before pulling the last ball of the fourth over to Jacob Bethell at deep backward square leg, and Iyer flicked the first ball of the fifth, possibly the worst of a superb spell by Archer, to the same fielder in the same position. When Axar Patel was caught behind five balls later India had played five overs, lost five wickets, and were careening towards disaster.
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Iyer, India’s new captain in this format, continued his two extraordinary 100% records: after four completed games he has won every toss and lost every match. Harry Brook, meanwhile, has won 84%, or all but three, of his 19 T20s as captain. But for much of the time they had bats in their hands England did not look en route to such a remarkable result, or any kind of positive one.
Salt, out first ball at Old Trafford on Saturday, had a contrasting innings on this occasion, lasting into the 17th over, even if at times it was scarcely more convincing. The evening started with a maiden, Arshdeep Singh finding vicious inswing with the new ball, and it took a while for the England opener to show any semblance of form. Of England’s opening partnership of 43 – their best for 16 games dating back to the trip to Ireland last September – he contributed just six.
For a while Salt kept going in the same vein, with few clean hits and few runs. He ended the ninth over on 17 off 19. One over later he had doubled his score, after hitting Varun Chakravarthy for a couple of fours and a purely struck six over midwicket, and finally he was away. He ended with 70 off 44 – “a mega innings”, according to Brook – while Sam Curran saw the team home with an unbeaten 41 off 24. “With 200 on the board, on that wicket – I don’t want to say we were confident but it would have taken a really special innings to lose the game.”
Well India’s innings was certainly pretty special. England produced something that might have been hard to defend; their opponents replied with something that was indefensible.
