In case you didn’t know..
After going unbeaten for the first six games at the 2019 Cricket World Cup, India succumbed to their first defeat of the tournament against England at Edgbaston. A stellar opening partnership from Jason Roy and Jonny Bairstow and was followed by Ben Stokes’ superb batting exploits. This helped the hosts to mount a solid total of 337 on the scoreboard.
During the chase, India lost their first wicket very early as KL Rahul departed for a duck. However, the Men in Blue had a rather slow start to the run-chase and Indian skipper Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma kept the scoreboard ticking. While the former scored his fifth successive fifty in the World Cup, the latter scored yet another ton to hand India a firm grip on the match.
However, following the departures of both the set batsmen, the two-time World Cup winners started from scratch as Hardik Pandya and Rishabh Pant started taking risks to get on par with the required run-rate.
By the end of the 40th over, it seemed like it was India’s match to lose. However, England’s bowling and fielding ensured that they stayed alive in the competition as they handed India their first defeat of the campaign. Both Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Kedar Jadhav failed to show intent and were restricted to just singles and doubles in the latter stages of the match.
The heart of the matter
Speaking in the commentary box, Nasser Hussain and Sourav Ganguly lashed out at the Indian side after the lack of intent displayed by them:
After the match ended, Ganguly continued:
What’s next?
Virat Kohli and co. will look to return to the winning ways as they face Bangladesh in their next fixture on Tuesday.
Also read - World cup all time records
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