Outplayed and outpowered, England look to salvage pride at Trent Bridge

On paper, it was supposed to be the Rohit Sharma-led India’s toughest test yet. Prior to this series, the visitors had won 13 of the 16 T20Is they’d played post the T20 World Cup, but coming up against England was believed to be a challenge of a different magnitude. And rightly so. Buttler, Roy, Livingstone, Moeen — this English side does not need an introduction. 

But as it has turned out, the Three Lions have so far proven to be the easiest opponents for Rohit’s India. 

Two games in, the series is done, but the concern does not lie in the results. 

Rather, it lies in the manner in which the hosts have folded, barely putting up a fight, letting India bulldoze them without showing any resistance.  

At the Rose Bowl, they were blown away by a sensational new-ball burst from India’s pairing of Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Arshdeep Singh. They were also at the receiving end of a spell-of-a-lifetime from Hardik Pandya, who scalped a sensational four-fer. 

Fair enough, these things happen in T20 cricket. Even the best have days to forget.

But after skipper Jos Buttler, at the toss, assured that his side will ‘bounce back strong’, England, in the second T20I, somehow outdid their showing from the first game, in the worst fashion imaginable of course. 

On Saturday at Edgbaston, the Indian seamers did not find prodigious swing. The conditions were flat and in front of them was a target that was very chaseable. England, though, folded like a pack of cards. They were dispirited, despondent and played like a side that lacked hunger. 

In the words of the skipper himself, it was a ‘very disappointing performance’ and England ‘deserved to lose’. 

The consequence of the horror show with the bat across the first two games is that the hosts will be entering the third game at Trent Bridge with nothing but pride to play for. 

It might not be the greatest of motivations for several players, but one person that’ll be hell-bent on registering a ‘W’ on Sunday will be Buttler: that last thing he’d want as Morgan’s heir is kick-starting his captaincy career with a whitewash against India. 

England need Roy, Buttler to show up

Frankly, England needn’t overthink the horror shows with the bat in the first two T20Is. Because no team in the world is going to win games of cricket consistently if they’re going to have their openers combinedly score 8 runs across 4 innings.

Jos Buttler and Jason Roy have been walking wickets so far this series, and the pair have been tormented by the swing of Bhuvneshwar Kumar.  Buttler has said ‘aight, imma head out’ at the first sight of Bhunveshwar: three balls, two dismissals. 

Roy followed Buttler’s suit at Edgbaston, perishing first ball, but in the first T20I he batted 8 balls against the right-armer and managed just 3 runs. 

Bhuvneshwar’s domination over the openers has played a significant part in India steamrolling England, and so come the third game at Trent Bridge, the two seasoned campaigners will have to find a way to weather the new ball storm.

Buttler and Roy’s failures have had a snowball effect on the entire batting order: in each of the first two games, Livingstone found himself batting well inside the powerplay. It’s not that the other batters were faultless, but England will go a long way in competing if they can get at least one of their two openers latch onto the Indian bowlers and set a platform. Come the third T20I, it’s a non-negotiable.

What is Sam Curran’s role in this England side, again?

Any side in the world would love to have a player like Sam Curran. A left-arm swing bowler capable of doubling-up as a finisher — a dream package, really.

But in a format like T20, even the best player in the world can prove to be redundant without the right role definition. At this point in time, it feels like Curran just exists in this English team because, well, he is Curran. No role definition. Nada.

Given 9 of Curran’s 12 T20I innings have come at No.7 or lower, it’s fair to conclude that he’s a bowling all-rounder. But here’s the deal: across his last 12 T20Is, Curran has completed his full quota of 4 overs just twice, bowling 2 overs or fewer 7 times.

In the first two games of this ongoing series, Curran has looked lost. Is he a powerplay specialist? Or an all-phase bowler? Or an all-rounder? He doesn’t know. He exists, that’s it.

And it has been a major problem for England, for essentially the way they’ve utilized Curran sometimes has tended to give the impression that they’re playing with 10 men. 

Given the side anyway has 6 bowling options outside of Curran, the question has to be asked if England would be better off playing a specialist batter like Phil Salt; his role in the side, at least, will be clear. And Salt is no stranger to batting at No.6 or lower, having struck a 24-ball 57 on debut against the Windies batting lower down the order. 

The same Curran question was also raised at the end of the five-match T20I series in India last year that England lost 3-2. Perhaps it’s time for Buttler and Matthew Mott to evaluate the 24-year-old’s role in the T20I set-up.

Only area India need to improve? Bat better against back-of-a-length deliveries

Team India have pretty much enjoyed a flawless series — with both bat and ball — so far but if there’s one area they can improve on, it’s their batting against back-of-a-length and short deliveries. 

In the first T20I at Rose Bowl, Chris Jordan managed to keep the Indian batters quiet by exclusively bowling 6m or shorter, feeding no full deliveries or yorkers. Jordan did the same at Edgbaston but found a partner-in-crime in debutant Richard Gleeson, who made life hell for the visitors with his hard lengths. 

Together in Birmingham, Jordan and Gleeson registered figures of 7/42 off 8 overs; that England still ended up conceding over 170 was down to India tearing into the spinners and David Willey.

Across the first two games, India pretty much ticked every box there is. It would be a perfect finish to the series for the visitors if, at Trent Bridge, they can get the better of the hard-lengths, against which they’ve scored at a SR of 123.00 and have lost 10 wickets in total.

Probable XIs

England: Jason Roy, Jos Buttler (c & wk), Dawid Malan, Liam Livingstone, Harry Brook, Moeen Ali, Sam Curran, David Willey, Chris Jordan, Richard Gleeson, Matthew Parkinson

India: Rohit Sharma (c), Rishabh Pant (wk), Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Dinesh Karthik, Ravindra Jadeja, Harshal Patel, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah, Yuzvendra Chahal