Right, how’s that happened? A glitch in the matrix? Match fixing? Tough English conditions actually existing? The slope at Lord’s? England has actually won the ODI series 2-1 and came back from 1 down as well. It’s not that crazy that the English won, but what is sad is that my cheeky posts about England losing. You can find those embarrassments here, and here. Let’s see how the English actually won though.
Game 1
So the Indians actually managed to win the first game and that already had me excited. I was happy that we were on our way to another series win and was already thinking of bad jokes I could make in this piece. However, things didn’t go to plan. More on that later though.
So the first game happened in Nottingham and England batted first. Jason Roy and Jonny Bairstow both made 38 runs in 35 balls as England got off to a good start. Captain Eoin Morgan and Joe Root didn’t do too well though, and the English found themselves four wickets down at 105 at the end of 20 overs. The Rajasthan Royal pair of Jos Buttler and Ben Stokes salvaged England’s innings with their half-centuries that were polar opposites of each other. Stokes made 50 in 103 balls, hitting two fours. A true test innings. Jos made 53 in 51 balls, rapid in comparison to Stokes. Cameos from Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid got England to a respectable 268. Kuldeep Yadav was the best Indian bowler, his crazy 6-25 spell was a delight to watch.
India absolutely killed the English bowling attack. Rohit Sharma hit a century, Virat Kohli hit 75 runs and Shikhar Dhawan hit 40 as India made the score with eight wickets and 9.5 overs to spare. So that was that, anticlimactic but convincing nonetheless.
Game 2
This one hurt. India lost by 86 runs. England batted first again and Eoin Morgan got himself back together and hit 50, whereas Joe Root got himself back together and hit 100. Roy and Bairstow were good too as they made around 40 runs each. 41.4 overs in, Moeen Ali got out and David Willey replaced him. Somehow, he got a half-century too. England would’ve made 270 or something had David not been so explosive, what a Willey. At the end of 50 overs, England made 322 runs.
India got off to a decent start. After ten overs, they were 57-2 with Rahul and Kohli on the crease. Rahul got out for a duck and Kohli made a decent 45, so things didn’t turn out as they were supposed to be. Suresh Raina made 46, Dhoni made 37 (and got booed by India fans, despite reaching 10,000 runs, good job India) but no one else did anything so India were bowled out for 236. At the end of two games, it’s England 1, India 1.
Game 3
This one was quite similar to the second one. Morgan and Root single handedly won the English the game and the series, but a part of it was down to the Indians not knowing how to bowl. Rohit Sharma made 2 runs in 18 balls and this test match innings combined with Dhawan’s mediocre 44 meant that India made 84 runs in 17 overs.
Kohli was good again, and so was Dhoni. Had it not been for them, India wouldn’t have made more than 200. Three batsmen made 21 runs, and one made 22, perhaps to stand out. At the end of the fifty, India were 256/8.
England had no problem in chasing the score. Another 100 from Root, and 88 from Morgan combined with a crazy fast 30 in 13 from Jonny Bairstow meant that England won by 8 wickets and had 5 and a half overs to spare. England won the series somehow, but they definitely deserved it. Let’s hope the Indians can do something better in the Test series that starts on the first of next month.
Till then.
