England showed ,that their habit of choking under big games, is thing of past, as they held their nerves well, in the final stage of match, to gift Indians ,a humiliating three run defeat and more significantly exit, from the world cup.
It was a must win encounter, for both the teams and frantic crowds in Lords appeared, as if the match was played in India, where one thing was surely obvious, that T 20 flu has hit England fans big time and fans couldn’t have asked a better contest, than they witnessed in Lords.
India put England into bat earlier in the day and it appeared to pay rich dividends, when R P Singh removed Luke Wright cheaply. But two pivotal players in England line – up, by name Ravi Bopara and Kevin Pietersen, announced, that they purely relish on playing big match pressure, where they dictated terms not allowing any bowler, to settle to their strides.
The pair managed seventy one runs, to provide a solid platform, for the rest of batsmen to make a rich harvest. But reality is far different from ones whims and fancies, as Ravindra Jadeja asserted the above statement, where he removed Bopara and Kevin Pietersen in successive over, to bring India back to contention.
Spinner Ravindra Jadeja bowled impressively giving mere twenty four runs, along with two price wickets and Harbhajan Singh bowled impressively, in his second spell in death over , barring two gifted boundaries in form of wides and manged, to restrict to England, to mere one fifty three runs.
Indian openers Rohit Sharma and Gautham Gambhir once again looked clueless, against the bowlers, in the hostile conditions and Rohit Sharma departed in second over, managing a inside edge pull shot back, to the stumps.
Suresh Raina horrendous run in tournament continued, as he gave his wicket away looking for a pull shot, of SideBottom but his wicket led, to one of the many horrible decisions taken by Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, by preferring Ravindra Jadeja ,to join Gautham Gambhir instead of Yuvraj Singh, which in the end proved, as a costly error.
Even though the pair managed, to script a decent partnership, they scored at snail pace, which turned few faces in dug out pale, especially Yuvraj Singh, as he would be burdened the pressure of chasing them if any of the batsmen gets out.
Eventually the crisis man Yuvraj Singh arrived for India and clouted two huge sixes to give huge Indian contingent a glimmer of hope, but the asking rate proved too much, for even the world’s most destructive batsmen and he was stumped beautifully by James Foster, of the bowling of Graeme Swann.
Yusuf Pathan and Dhoni tried to rescue the sinking ship in the end and probably it was too late by then and Side Bottom bowled an effective last over, to help their team, clinch the much needed win by three runs.
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