The Indian cricket team put a resounding total of 336 runs on the board against England in the 2nd ODI on Friday, with KL Rahul, Virat Kohli and Rishabh Pant leading the charge with the bat. Yet, the total turned out to be insufficient against the batting powerhouse of England who changed down the target with more than 6 overs to spare.
Barring Bhuvneshwar Kumar, no Indian bowler managed to arrest the free-flowing boundaries of English batsmen, with Kuldeep Yadav specifically being taken for a ride. Though it was the bowling unit that failed to fulfill the challenge, former India cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar feels certain batsmen too are to be blamed for not posting an even bigger target on the board.
Manjrekar, in a series of tweets, highlighted how the Indian team didn’t go after England spinner Moeen Ali, who conceded only 47 runs in 10 overs, on a wicket where spinners were struggling to keep the flow of runs under check.
“Quality of opposition’s batting an important consideration when assessing par score along with pitch and ground conditions. Lesson learnt for India tonight,” Manjrekar said in his first tweet.
“Moeen Ali bowled 10 overs for 47 runs in today’s batting conditions. It wasn’t because he bowled brilliantly it was more because Ind didn’t really go after him. Ind would look back at that as a grave mistake not to be repeated in similar conditions,” he added.
“This is the reason why my player of the match last ODI was Shardul. If not for his 3 wickets, this would have been India’s fate in that game too,” he concluded.
Rishabh Pant (77 off 40) and Hardik Pandya (35 off 16) accelerated the scoring rate very well at the end of the innings while Virat Kohli (66 off 79) and KL Rahul (108 off 114) scored at 83.54 and 94.74 respectively.
