Poor Virat Kohli. It must be so tough to taste defeat on home soil. After all, yesterday’s five-run reverse in Kolkata was the first time it had happened to him as captain in nineteen matches. So India are not quite invincible, and England gave them a real contest over the three ODI fixtures.
At Pune, it took a blistering innings of 120 in 76 balls from Kedar Jadhav to overhaul England’s excellent 350. A few days later, the Cuttack encounter produced 747 runs, with a Morgan-inspired chase falling a mere 15 runs short. The five-run victory at Eden Gardens was no more than the tourists deserved, especially having failed to chalk up a single major triumph so far.
For the first time in a three-match ODI series all six innings delivered at least 300 runs. Never before has such a series produced an aggregate exceeding 2,000. It’s not often you get two centurions in one innings in consecutive matches either.
Jadhav and Kohli may have dominated the opener but it was a fairytale in Cuttack when the two 35 year-olds MS Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh shared a stand of 256. With all the hullabaloo around Kohli’s successful leadership and Dhoni’s stepping down before the series began, it seemed like a re-run of times past when the latter delivered a vintage century. Even more impressive was the fact that his partnership with Yuvi turned a score of 25-3 into a match-winning 381-6.
It wasn’t all about the Indian batsmen. England’s line-up had more than a few moments, too. Jason Roy passed 50 on all three occasions. Root and Stokes did so twice, while captain Morgan’s rum run of low scores ended with a measured century that came close to reaching that huge target in the second game.
Of course, for all the entertainment generated by such a run-fest, it was no fun to be a bowler. Chris Woakes topped the wickets table with a mere six. Ravi Jadeja was the only man to concede fewer than six runs an over. Ball, Stokes and Bumrah all conceded at least 200 across the series. Moeen Ali failed to take a single scalp in 20 overs. No, no fun at all!
All in all, a splendid advert for 50-over cricket, and I doubt the forthcoming Twenty20 encounters will serve up three such brilliant contests.
