AFP, Kanpur :
England thumped India by 7 wickets in the opening T20 international at Kanpur to go 1-0 up in the three-match series with a thorough team performance. The ease with which England won the match came through in the fact that they chased down their target with 11 balls to spare.
Eoin Morgan won the toss and put the hosts in and the bowlers responded by restricting India to a below par score of 147/7. KL Rahul’s horror show in limited overs cricket continued as he contributed only 8 runs of 9 deliveries before being sent back by Chris Jordan.
Yuvraj Singh was the next to be dismissed for 12 by Liam Plunkett as India were now 75/3. Suresh Raina played some adventurous shots as he made a comeback to India colours and gave the innings the push it needed to move towards the 100-run mark, but Raina’s dismissal by Stokes for 34 meant India lost their power-hitters with MS Dhoni playing the sheet anchor’s role.
Dhoni farmed the strike till the end to ensure he could get a crack at the English bowling in the last overs but the big push never came. Dhoni remained unbeaten on 36 of 27 deliveries with only three boundaries to his name. It was yet another strange knock by MS Dhoni in a limited overs match failing to get the big boundaries when need as India finished with 147/7 in 20 overs.
That prompted Indian captain Virat Kohli to introduce leg-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal into the attack and the lanky leggy responded by sending back Billings (22 of 10 balls) and Roy (19 of 11 balls) in the same over to get India right bckinto th match.
The experienced duo of captain Eoin Morgan (51) and Joe Root (46*) then got together and put on an 83-run stand for the third wicket to put th visitors on the path to victory. Morgan departed after scoring his half-century but Root stayed unbeaten till the end to guide the 2016 WT20 runners-up to yet another memorable T20 win on Indian soil.
The second T20I will be played at Nagpur on January 29.
