England had come to lose

It is nothing but a well sought after loss to England when they couldn't even come close to the target of 272 despite at one stage of the game being in a comfortable position at 129-0. With such a start, most of the teams in the ICC's list would have played a spoilsport to a team that had plans to whitewash their opposition rather than support the same. Keeping that initial grip apart, England could manage only 47 runs from 15 overs at a run-rate of just over 3.00 runs an over. One has to doubt whether it was the same England who whitewashed India on their previous tour.

With such a dismal performance, it is difficult to say where the problem lies with England. Was it because of the fact that the powerplay got over which was responsible for their batting debacle or was it that the Indian bowlers got their rhythm only after the 21^st over or last but not the least, if not for their openers, no one had come prepared for the game? One can understand the problem the English batsmen have playing spin bowling under sub-continent conditions. But, if someone like Ashwin and Jadeja can tackle players with a decade old experience, there can be little said about such team.

There were the likes of Jonathan Trott, Ian Bell and Ravi Bopara who could have done a bit to save some face for their team. Earlier as well, things didn't go on as smoothly for the Indian batsmen when Gautam Gambhir and Rahane had to be patient when facing the new ball. In the end, it was Dhoni's quickfire 75* runs that saw the Indian total cross the 250 run mark. In my opinion, Mahendra Singh Dhoni should have been the man of the match along with Ravindra Jadeja. But, Jadeja was also not a bad choice for the award.

First of all, it was a wrong decision to allow the hosts to bat on a pitch that was tough for the batsmen which was evident when hard hitting batsmen like Dhoni and Gambhir had to fight with patience initially until the could settle down. Due to that mistake from Alistair Cook, Dhoni and with that India got the advantage of slog overs towards the end of the innings which Dhoni efficiently used. But still, losing 9 wickets for 47 runs speaks it all for England to have got used to losing or donated the match to India. With a T20 game left, one has to see whether India can make it 6-0.