The skipper of England, Eoin Morgan was disappointed with the performance of his team after losing vs. India even after getting a rising start from Alex Hales.
The first Twenty20 match of the series concluded on Thursday, December 20, 2012, at Subrata Roy Sahara Stadium, Pune. The visitors lost the match against the Blue Shirts by a big margin of five wickets after utilising just 17.5 overs. The sharp eyes of the seasoned captain of India, MS Dhoni anticipated the dew factor in the match and very intelligently offered the batting to the visitors.
England started off briskly and especially their opener, Alex Hales was severe on the Indian bowling. He made his intentions clear by dispatching two successive fours in the very first over followed by another two in the next. His partner, Michael Lumb, was going in the opposite direction and lost his wicket for one mere run on ten balls he faced. Hales continued with his onslaught and dispatched 2 towering sixes and even fours in the fifth and sixth overs.
Luke Wright gave him admirable support by hitting a couple of fours and one six in the following overs and all commentators and experts were predicting a final score of around 170-180 for England. The first 10 overs produced 89 runs for the loss of just one wicket when the all rounder, Yuvraj Singh, destroyed the batting line up of the tourists with a deadly spell. He removed Alex Hales for 56, Luke Wright 34 and Eoin Morgan at just 5 runs and England was reeling at 4-100 after 12.4 overs. Morgan was pleased with the performance of Alex Hales but the middle and late order batsmen were unable to continue with the rhythm. They finally managed 157 runs after losing six wickets at the close of the 20th over and fell short of 15-20 runs. Morgan said,
“We got off to a great start. Alex Hales played tremendously well along with Luke Wright but in that middle period we failed to kick on and score. That positivity wasn’t there in our batting and we lacked about 15 or 20.”
The damage done by Yuvraj Singh made all the difference and England was unable to recover from thereon and the efforts of Alex Hales and Luke Wright went in vein. The dream of high score was shattered and the Englishmen were thrown out of the game by the Men in Blue. The miseries were multiplied by their bowlers as their supreme pacer, Jade Dernbach, started off with two back to back wide balls and delivered three such deliveries in the first over. The Indian bowlers ended up with just one wide ball in 20 overs as compared to 10 from 17.5 overs from the English bowlers and that had an effect. Eoin Morgan described the indiscipline of his team in the game by saying,
“We never seemed to get going again. We continually lost wickets, which is a shame because because the start we had, we were on for a good score. We always thought we were in the game. We lacked a small bit of discipline in our bowling but we were always up against it with that score on the board.”
The Indian batsmen led by Yuvraj Singh tormented the bowling of England and the target of 158 runs was achieved 13 balls earlier with five wickets in hand. India is up in the two match series by 1-0 and England has to perform well in the second and final T20 if they want to square the series. The Team India is in a great nick and keeping in view their present form they look confident to win the series.
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