England Thumps India by 8 Wickets in First T20, Kohli Attributes Loss to Batsmen Failing to Assess the Pitch
England thrashed India by eight wickets in the first T20 international match played at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad March 12. (BCCI/IANS photo)
Associated Press
AHMEDABAD, India — England flattened India’s fancied batting lineup to win the first Twenty20 by eight wickets March 12.
Led by Jofra Archer’s 3-23, England restricted India to 124-7.
Jason Roy and Jos Buttler opened with 72 and England won at 130-2 with 27 balls to spare.
Roy and Buttler raised 50 runs in the first six overs. Roy was out for 49, trapped leg before wicket by Washington Sundar, and Buttler made 28.
Jonny Bairstow was unbeaten on 26 and Dawid Malan on 24 after clubbing a winning six off Sundar.
Archer took a wicket off his second delivery when Lokesh Rahul played the fast bowler back onto his stumps. Hardik Pandya and Shardul Thakur fell in the paceman’s last over off successive deliveries.
Captain Virat Kohli, who struggled in the preceding 3-1 victory in the test series against England, fell for 0 to legspinner Adil Rashid as India fell to 3-20 in the first five overs and couldn’t recover.
Shreyas Iyer hit a fighting 67 off 48 balls in an otherwise below-par batting effort by India, for whom star opener Rohit Sharma is being rested for the first two games.
The second T20 of five is on March 14.
IANS adds: Kohli attributed his team’s defeat to the batsmen’s failure to assess the pitch.
Kohli thought the batsmen needed to use the depth of the crease and ride the bounce, which only Shreyas Iyer (67 off 48 balls) could do.
“We were just not aware enough as to what we had to do on this kind of a pitch. I think (it was) lack of execution of shots that we tried to play out there in the middle. It is something that we have to address as batsmen. It wasn’t an ideal day on the park. You have to accept your faults and come back in the next game with a bit more intent and clarity of plans on what are the areas you want to hit,” Kohli said. “It was a strange kind of start for us. The wicket allowed you to hit the kind of shots you wanted to. I think Shreyas’ innings was an example of how you could use the depth of the crease and ride the bounce, because there was variable bounce at times. He hit in the areas square of the wicket, which the others failed to do. It was just a below par batting performance from us, and England made us pay.”
The 32-year-old skipper also said that Indian batsmen got ahead of themselves.
“If the pitch allows you to play those kind of shots, you can be aggressive from ball one. But probably we got ahead of ourselves, and didn’t spend enough time in the middle to assess the conditions. Shreyas did that but there were too many wickets down at that stage for us to get to 150-160. If we had eight wickets in hand at the end of 10 overs, we could have made a game of it,” Kohli said.
