India has crushed England by 7 wickets in the first T20 match played in Kolkata. With this match, Brendon McCullum has formally taken over as the coach of England’s white ball team. In the last few years, England’s Test team under McCullum has been playing in badball style. In such a situation, it was being speculated that due to McCullum’s aggressive strategies, England will give a tough fight to Team India in the first T20 match, but in reality nothing like this happened.
Badball remained unfulfilled
It has been an old problem of the England team that it struggles against spin bowling in the middle overs of white ball matches. Something similar has happened this time too. Arshdeep Singh gave early shocks to England by taking the wickets of Phil Salt and Ben Duckett early. Harry Brook and Jos Buttler’s partnership had just reached 48 runs, when Varun Chakraborty’s spin balls dismissed Harry Brook and Liam Livingstone in the 8th over. Amidst the expectations of white ball, the entire England team could score only 132 runs.
Morale boosting victory for Gautam Gambhir
On one hand, Brendon McCullum did not get a good start as England’s white ball coach. But on the other hand, this victory would have been a morale booster for Gautam Gambhir and Team India. Recently, the Indian team had lost 1-3 to Australia in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. At the same time, India had lost 2 consecutive Test series under Gautam Gambhir’s coaching, so this victory was also a morale booster for Gambhir. Gambhir had also recently visited the Kalighat temple in Kolkata to pay obeisance. Let us also tell you that Team India did not include Mohammed Shami in the playing eleven, everyone was shocked by this decision, but in the end, India’s strategy of going with three spinners proved to be effective.
