With the declared intention to score 250-plus goals regularly in T20Is, India’s head coach Gautam Gambhir praised his boys for adopting “high-risk, high-reward cricket”, which fostered them in a 4-1 series victory over England. India’s ideology of playing an aggressive brand of cricket irrespective of the situation was clear in the last three T20Is against England. Under-fire English fast bowler Saqib Mahmood gave it all in Pune with three wickets in the second over; he also did rather well by bowling the first over maiden over of the innings.
The Indian batters duly kept their heads and proceeded to flatten the English bowlers as they collectively posted a fighting total of 181/9, a feat too tough for the tourists to chase down in retrospect.
In Mumbai, losses kept mounting from one end, yet Abhishek Sharma blasted away at the hosts to new heights with a record-rich 247/9, India’s fourth rule in all.
“This is the kind of T20 cricket we want to play. We do not want to afford a game of cricket to be lost; we want to play high-risk, high-reward cricket and these boys have taken that ideology, that policy, extremely well. And I think the ideology of this T20 team is based on selflessness and fearlessness; and I think these boys have done that very consistently for the last six months,” Gambhir stated on the broadcast.
“We are looking to get to scores of between 250 and 260 in a regular way, and in the process, we will have games where we end up getting bundled out for anywhere between134-120. And that is the essence of T20 cricket, and you will reap just rewards in all cases if you don’t play high-risk cricket. But in the big picture, I feel we are mostly on the right track, especially for those big tournaments coming up. We want to keep carrying on this way, we want to keep playing without the fear of losing anything,” he adds.
One significant factor contributing to India’s success was the English batsmen’s inability to decipher Varun Chakravarthy’s spin. For the English batsmen, the Indian mystery spinner remained an unsolved riddle.
Finishing the series with a tally of 14 wickets in 5 games, Varun Chakravarthy emerged as the top wicket-taker with an average of 9.85 and an economy rate of 7.66.
“I think his transformation from IPL to international T20 cricket has been phenomenal. And this series was probably the benchmark as well because England is a high-quality side. They’ve got some really quality cricketers and the kind of surfaces we’ve played on- I think they were fantastic batting wickets and the way he’s bowled those tough overs have been phenomenal,” said Gambhir on Varun.
