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.

Sweet revenge 1 for India

It is needless to be said about the way Indians will take on the English team on their return series to India where they are scheduled to play 5 one dayers and one T20 game. Luckily for England, there will be no test matches to worry about. Had this been something similar to the Ashes, they would have retained the title for a mere 2 months before surrendering the same to India. Yesterday, at Hyderabad India registered a first win against England by 126 runs which was more than any margin of victory for both teams in the last two series played against each other.

The English bowlers had absolutely no answers to the helicopter shot by Mahendra Singh Dhoni who top scored with 87 and was awarded the man of the match. There were contributions from other batsmen as well that included Raina, Ravindra Jadeja and Gautam Gambhir to a greater extent. The only bowler from England who tasted success a little bit was Graeme Swann who had an over maiden and a wicket to his name. Of course, even Steven Finn and Jade Dernbach also returned with a wicket but were at the same time belted for more than 6.0 runs an over.

If the batsmen did their work by scoring runs and keeping the scoreboard ticking, even the bowlers were not short of performing their duty when no bowler bowled his complete quota of 10 overs and still saw all 10 wickets from England tumbling as though it was a day 5 of a test match. If not for Alistair Cook, no other batsmen had a worthy contribution with the bat though Jonathan Trott stayed there at the crease for a decent amount of time. 6 out of the eleven English batsmen who made it to the crease (obviously) returned back scoring single digit scores.

England's innings got over with close to 15 overs of their game still to go. Scorecard suggests that only Praveen Kumar had an over maiden under his name though other bowlers were no short in tackling their opposition. Umesh Yadav was the most expensive bowler who gave away runs at a rate of 6.40 runs an over which can be forgiven, given India's victory over the trouble torn team and with Umesh Yadav being in his early cricketing days. The first six in the English innings came from the blades of the number 10 batsman - Steven Finn who luckily remained unbeaten.

How does it matter who leads England

Well the breaking news is that England have named two different captains for two limited overs format of the game with Stuart Broad having to lead the side for T20 games while Alistair Cook will henceforth take care of England's one day games. Though this news hardly sparks of any sort of debate, people keeping their fingers crossed are just countable. At least as a cricket blogger, I have no other option but to shed some words regarding the selection or appointment. The tag "No Police State Girls blog" just doesn't seem to go too well with me whatsoever at this moment.

The result of the latest development in England cricket was due to the fact that their then captain Andrew Strauss wants to focus completely on his test career while Paul Collingwood has nothing to say about his T20 career. And, Paul Collingwood has every reason to justify himself when he bought home the country's first glory since decades of cricket that included failures, just misses and chokes. Collingwood's feat was achieved after England had three workld cup finals without a win along with an ICC champion's trophy that too ending up as runners-up. If South Africans would be reading this, they'd just breathe free.

The chokers tag is not totally restricted to South Africa alone and England also have an equal share in it. Coming to the point, one has to rather concentrate on the entire team of England which are in doldrums at present with their latest such thing evident in the world cup. England failed to win matches against Bangladesh and Ireland despite posting a stiff target of 327 on the board against the latter and having the opposition reeling at 111/5 at one stage. Of course, England were able to rarely regain and defend the Ashes on the previous two occasions but that is regarding their test cricket.

Right now, it has to be the entire England team and not just the captain alone whom the ECB needs to focus on. If not for their T20 win last year, England have gone back to their old ways of leaving things half way when they had just one T20 tournament against Pakistan and test series' against the same though which England won convincingly, their body language didn't speak for them. They beat both Pakistan and Australia with destiny favoring them by not having matches against other teams like Sri Lanka and India against whom their real myth is evaluated.