If you can’t score, can’t catch and can’t be discipline, then you are deserved to be in the losing side.
Ind vs Eng, 2nd ODI: Sloppy England deserved to loss
What more England needed than to bat first on a lovely track that had little moisture but they seen more at their home to put-up a big score for India to chase? May be they want bowlers from Hyderabad team.
Winning the toss, England batted first to make best use of the pitch which is going to get slower as the match progress. But they were off to worse start they would have imagined in nightmares. Cook gone for 0 in 4th ball of the match to Praveen and Kieswetter also for 0 in next over to Vinay with England still at nil on the score board. Trott and Peterson were watch full initially but latched on to punish the loose balls from Indian new ball bowlers. Trott in particularly was looking dangerous scoring plenty of boundaries but he was dismissed by Vinay in the last ball of mandatory powerplay.
Thereafter Kevin and Bopara slowly rebuild the innings. Kevin after settling down well, he launched two consecutive sixes of Jadeja over to announce bad things to come for India. England was looking good at 114/3 from 24 overs for score well above 250 but they again squandered the advantage to India. Bopara dismissed by Ashwin in next over and Umesh removed Peterson in the over next to previous. Suddenly England went down from 121/3 to 122/5 in a matter for 4 balls. But Patel and Bairstow did superbly to take England past 200 runs. Both of them played well, rotated the strike and came down the pitch to hit big one whenever needed. But yet again England made merry of the advantage by losing Patel and Bairstow in consecutive overs. England managed to scrape through to reach 237 runs before being bowled out by India. Vinay Kumar who bowled superbly picked up his career best figures of 4-30 and rest of Indian bowlers chipped in with good performance.
India began their chase for 238 runs very badly losing both openers with 29 runs on the board in 7 overs. England bowlers came hard with new ball and thus got rewarded with 2 wickets. Both Patel and Rahane lost their wickets because of blood rush to score runs quickly. English bowlers bowler very well to pick more wickets but edges kept finding the boundaries instead their team players hands. Virat and Gambhir were lucky to survive as many edges flown of their bat either to boundaries or just short of English boundaries. Bad thing to happen for England after picking both openers is to concede 57 runs in next 8 overs apart from not lucky enough to pick 2 more wickets.
Virat and Gambhir said thanks to their luck and converted that to produce another classic partnership just like they did in world cup finals. They just scored easily without taking much risk and chased down the target in just 36.4 overs. Virat scored his 7th ODI hundred and first in his home ground from just 89 balls. England only did manage to add more hit to their reputations after 15th over by unnecessarily exchanging words with Virat and Gambhir which needed umpires to intervene on atleast not more than 3 times. Not even single bowler has Economy rate under 5 tells the story when defending modest total of 238 runs.
For India, Gambhir forms will be very much please apart from Kohli’s maturity in batting and Umesh Yadav bowling got better as he bowled with very good pace. For England, all three departments faltered for them. They actually looked like the Donkeys on the field mentioned by Nasser.
The series is almost but over for England. For India, the 5-0 matters lot now!
Tags: 2nd ODI, Cricket, England, Gautam Gambhir, India, ODI Series, Virat Kohli
