- England lost by 68 runs, ending their title defence in a disappointing fashion.
- The weather threatened to ruin the game before a ball was even thrown.
- As the match began, Buttler and his team were on the back foot with both bat and ball.
England’s T20 World Cup defence came to a humiliating end as they were crushed by India for 68 runs on a slow, low pitch in Guyana, raising question marks over the future of coach Matthew Mott and captain Jos Buttler.
Pre-match predictions had it looking like the Amazon rains would be the biggest hurdle to their progress but instead they were defeated by a brilliant half-century from Rohit Sharma combined with an Indian bowling attack that thrived in the weather.
Needing an improbable 172 to reach the final against South Africa in Barbados on Saturday, England collapsed from an unbeaten 26 to 103 in one go, as if they had batted against Turner in a Test match in Chennai or Ahmedabad. For managing director Rob Key, the magnitude of this defeat must confirm what he already expected: a change is needed if England are to once again rise to the top of world cricket’s white-ball pecking order.
As the innings collapsed in just 16.4 overs against the left-arm spin of Akshar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav, Buttler sat with his head slumped in the dugout, perhaps reflecting on the reality of an incomplete season for a team that had optimistically expected to reach the semi-finals.
It’s been five years since either player has lifted a white-ball trophy. An era has ended. Something needs to be done to freshen things up. It’s hard to imagine Moeen Ali or Chris Jordan playing international cricket again, while there must be uncertainty about Jonny Bairstow, who was for a duck with Patel’s third ball. Adil Rashid is England’s best spinner but is 36 years old.
Buttler refrained from speculating about anyone’s future, much less his own, but said he was looking forward to some time away from cricket to “reflect not just on this game but on the last few months”.
He added, “India clearly outplayed us and deserved to win. We allowed them to score 20-25 more points. It was a difficult court.”
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That was all true, but it was almost as devastating as South Africa’s nine-wicket defeat of Afghanistan in the first semi-final in Trinidad the night before. And it was stunning revenge for India’s 10-wicket defeat to England at the same stage of the T20 World Cup in Adelaide two years ago.
England’s best chance to make India sweat may have passed before the match even began, with Buttler winning six of his eight innings and opting to play it safe by bowling first on a pitch that looked set to get increasingly tough as the match progressed.
Yet they might have been in control when Sharma scored just five runs off his 57 off 39 balls, but Phil Salt misdirected the ball and it flew over his hands for four as Archer looked on in despair.
Just three days earlier, Sharma had thrashed Australia for 92 runs in an innings of 41, his highest score of the tournament. Had England dismissed him earlier, the tone of the match might have been different, especially given Virat Kohli’s dismal World Cup form continued with his loss to Reece Topley for nine runs.
Instead, after Sam Curran dismissed Rishabh Pant easily, Sharma forged a match-winning partnership of 73 runs in 8.2 overs with the equally talented Suryakumar Yadav, second in the ICC rankings behind Australia’s Travis Head.
Even a rain break of an hour and 15 minutes couldn’t stop their momentum.
But their progress has not always been smooth, with the spin of Rashid and Liam Livingstone proving difficult to avoid, signalling England’s struggles.
This drew attention to Buttler’s decision to completely ignore Moeen’s off-break, which he later said was a mistake – and he was honest about it, of course – but it was a major oversight in terms of the conditions.
While Rashid and Livingstone conceded just 49 runs in eight overs, the four seamers – Topley, Archer, Curran and Jordan – scored 120 runs in 12 overs.
England will likely claim to have reached the World Cup semi-finals, unlike Australia and co-hosts West Indies, but they lost three of their four matches against Test match opponents and made a nervous progress through the group stage and Super Eight thanks to wins over Oman, Namibia and the United States.
Mott had argued before the match that England were getting stronger as the tournament progressed but a batting performance that saw Archer reach triple figures, topped by Harry Brook’s 25, did not support his theory.
After all, in two World Cups, England have won three of their 12 matches against Test match opponents.
Key must now decide whether that will be the basis for a rebuild. As for this talented Indian team, it will take a monumental effort from South Africa to stop them from winning their first World Cup in 13 years.