T20 World Cup 2022: Barraging England exposes Team India's chinks

And so, the semifinal jinx continues. For the fourth time in a row, India failed to clear the penultimate hurdle at the World Cup, their latest campaign coming to a juddering halt after a 10-wicket mauling at the hands of England.

As a rule, defeats hurt, but some do so more than others. This will rankle Rohit Sharma and his men for a long time now. Hardly playing like the No. 1-ranked T20I team on the planet, India were outplayed and outclassed, as head coach Rahul Dravid put it, by a hyper-charged England side that was switched on with the ball and electric with the bat.

The sequence of semifinal losses at World Cups began in the 50-over version in Australia in 2015, extended to the T20 World Cup at home in 2016 and spilled over to the 50-over format again in England in 2019. This latest defeat was particularly embarrassing, both for the manner and the margin – by ten wickets with a whopping 24 deliveries to spare.

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England are a formidable white-ball side, make no mistake. From the embers of their disastrous 2015 World Cup campaign, they rose Phoenix-like, reshaping their destiny by placing their faith in all-out batting aggression. Just how far they have come along as a limited-overs team was evident at the Adelaide Oval on Thursday night when they made a potentially stiff chase of 169 appear a walk in the park. Their systematic dismantling of a quality Indian attack that had its worst night of the competition in the most important game was a sight to behold, and not even the most ardent of Indian supporters wouldn’t have enjoyed the entertainment, even if it came at their favourite team’s expense.

Twenty runs fewer? Not exactly

It’s hard to say which of Jos Buttler or Alex Hales was the more damaging. Buttler is an established dasher, a particularly destructive force at the top of the tree. Hales is more of a problem child, put out to pasture due to behavioural issues and only brought back for the World Cup because of Jonny Bairstow’s freak ankle injury. Together, they launched an assault that was at once breathless and breathtaking.

India might have felt reasonably confident with the quantum of runs at their disposal, even if it was perhaps 20 fewer than they would have liked. But from the time Buttler kicked off the chase with three fours in the first over from Bhuvneshwar Kumar, there was only one team in the contest. There was no let-up in intensity while India went in the exact opposite direction, their lengths ragged and unsuited to the dimensions of the ground, their fight ebbing away with every scything stroke.

Hales on fire

The Adelaide Oval, as the name suggests, is an oval ground, with shorter square boundaries and very, very long straighter ones. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the length to go is fuller, that’s where you’d rather err. Instead, India bowled far too short, allowing Hales to jump onto the backfoot, free his arms and thump the pull with spectacular effect. He also used the sweep with devastating results, forcing R Ashwin to dump his off-break for the carrom ball and effectively defanging him.

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England used smarts, nous, intelligence and beautiful brutality to drive India to their knees. Seldom did a ball sneak past the outside edge, not a single over went by where there wasn’t a boundary. In all, England smacked 13 fours and 10 sixes, numbers in keeping with their aggressive mantra though they hardly covered an international attack of the experience and quality of India in glory.

Bumrah’s absence felt?

Worryingly, this wasn’t the first time in recent memory that India were found wanting when under the pump from the opposition. At the T20 World Cup in the UAE last year, they allowed Pakistan to hunt down 151 without losing a wicket and last week, also at the Adelaide Oval, they seemed clueless when Litton Das, the Bangladesh opener, went after them and threatened an upset single-handedly. That’s a trend Dravid and Rohit Sharma ought to have helped arrest by now. For the first time in the competition, India would have wished they had Jasprit Bumrah in their midst, but of course the Gujarat quick is back home, recuperating from a back injury.

As concerning as the lack of penetration with the ball is the failure of the openers to provide even one meaningful start in the competition. Buttler and Hales put on 170 without being separated, England’s highest opening stand in all T20 Internationals and the third time in a row in this competition that they had realised at least 50 for the first wicket. Contrast this with the starts from Rohit and KL Rahul – in six innings, they only put on 88 at less than 15 on average, their highest alliance was 27. For a team that is highly reliant on a good start, these are unacceptable numbers.

India’s weakness exposed

Even accounting for the juice in the pitches this early in the season in Australia, it’s hard to reconcile to the absence of a single start worth the name. It was just as well that Virat Kohli and Suryakumar came to their rescue time after time until the law of averages finally caught up with the latter, who promised much but was undone by leggie Adil Rashid for 14. Rashid and Liam Livingstone, also a legspinner but not in the same league, bowled seven tidy overs between them for 41 runs. India’s spinners failed to make any impression, though the quick-talking R Ashwin might point out that by the time he came on to bowl in the seventh over, 63 were already on the board.

Where India go from here is a topic for discussion at another time. For now, this crushing defeat will take time processing, digesting and then dissecting. For all their commitment to a revamped batting approach, India’s highest Powerplay score was 46 for one (against the Netherlands). The others ranged between 31 and 38. The passive-aggressive defence of their performance notwithstanding, it’s hard to justify these statistics.

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Despite having done everything in their control to be perfectly prepared for this competition, India have come unstuck horribly badly. England have opened old wounds that will need plenty of care and addressing. This can be dismissed as one bad night if one is so inclined, but it isn’t just one isolated bad night now, is it?