<\/p>\n
India tried to make hay, and succeeded in making history. They have never lost a T20 like this, not even nearly. England prevailed by the ludicrous margin of 125 runs, fully 45 more than their opponents\u2019 previous record defeat, after shredding the most feared batting side in world cricket for just 76 runs and in fewer than a dozen overs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was atrocious,\u201d the India captain, Shreyas Iyer, said. \u201cWe played awful cricket.\u201d And their innings had\u00a0started so well.<\/p>\n
Vaibhav \u00adSooryavanshi sent the sixth ball flying over deep third. The first ball of the second over, a full toss, was carted over point by Abhishek Sharma, the third launched by Sooryavanshi off his pads and over deep square leg. Nine balls bowled, 22 runs scored, ball deposited into the crowd three times. At this point India were all about the sixes. Soon they were at sixes and sevens.<\/p>\n All the pre-match talk had been of how ideal this surface would be for batting, on a traditionally \u00adhigh\u2011scoring ground and with a dry, lightning\u2011fast outfield, but \u00adEngland struggled for much of their innings and set India an apparently \u00adachievable target of 202. In trying to blast their way to victory, they blundered their way to defeat.<\/p>\n While admitting that some of their more experienced players \u201cneeded to adapt and play according to the \u00adsituation\u201d, Gautam \u00adGambhir, the India head coach, insisted his side\u2019s approach had been right. \u201c\u00adSometimes when you play a high\u2011risk, high\u2011reward game these things can happen, you get bundled out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what has made us successful and we\u2019ll try to continue to play the same way. We\u2019ve always believed that in a T20 it\u2019s all about going out there and expressing yourself, and sometimes you do get the results and sometimes you don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n As their evening unravelled India\u2019s batters simply refused to keep the ball on the ground, at least until their chances of victory were themselves subterranean. A run chase that might have been a stroll was instead punctuated with head-spinning regularity by batters walking, dolefully, back towards the dressing\u00a0room. Only three of England\u2019s overs did not \u00adfeature at least one dismissal.<\/p>\n Abhishek was the first to go, \u00adpicking out Phil Salt at deep point in the \u00adsecond over to become the first of Josh Tongue\u2019s four wickets. In the third over Sooryavanshi swished at Jofra Archer\u2019s bouncer and gloved the ball\u00a0behind. That India\u2019s boy wonder has after just two appearances already top-scored for his side is not surprising; that he did so with just 13\u00a0is remarkable.<\/p>\n