Ben Duckett believes that the English cricket public will forget their team’s 0-3 ODI whitewash to India if the same opposition is beaten in the final of the ICC Champions Trophy, but the question I have is: which England cricket fan believes this team can reach the final of the tournament?
So abject have England been since they limped out of the 2023 World Cup in the league stage, that they have lost 10 of 14 ODIs since then – and four series in a row – with Wednesday night’s 142-run loss to India giving them a 1-7 record on this four across white-ball formats.
The clean sweep was fashioned by Shubman Gill’s seventh ODI century – to follow scores of 87 and 60 in the series before this – and fifties to Virat Kohli (52) and Shreyas Iyer (78) in a total of 356. England, as expected, never came close and their innings ended on 214 in the 35th over.
Rohit Sharma’s early exit for 1 to a flick off Mark Wood’s first delivery of the match was followed by a century partnership between Gill and Kohli. While the younger Gill was the more fluent given his form in this series, Kohli overcame a shaky start to face 55 deliveries in the middle, during which time he struck seven fours and a six. A century was there for the taking on a run-laden Ahmedabad pitch, but on 52 Kohli was duped into nicking a lovely delivery from his nemesis, Adil Rashid.
Rashid would go on to add three wickets as England kept India from running away to 400, but before that it was all about Gill. The heir apparent to Kohli in terms of ODI cricket, Gill was sublime with his driving off the pacers as India rattled along after the loss of Rohit. Key to frustrating the spinners was playing the ball late and fine, and Gill did this superbly as he crossed the 50-run mark and to three figures off 95 deliveries.
Helping him add 104 was Shreyas Iyer, another man in form against England. Iyer’s 64-ball 78 contained eight fours and two sixes and he too looked destined for a century before he got a faint tickle on a ball from Rashid that spun down his pads. Rashid added Gill for 112 when the opener swiped across the line, and then Hardik Pandya who looked in the mood as he tonked two sixes in a breezy 17 off nine balls.
With Axar Patel also failing with bat for the first time in this series, it fell on KL Rahul to contribute his only significant knock in three ODIs, a good-looking 40 off 29 balls.
As they have tried all tour, the combination of Duckett and Phil Salt gave England a good start but once they were dismissed a familiar rot set in. Duckett hit eight fours in his 22-ball 34 and Salt got 23 off 21, before both fell to Arshdeep Singh who was playing his first ODI in eight months. Tom Banton, who has replaced the injured Jacob Bethell in England’s squad for the Champions Trophy, made 38 off 41 deliveries but there was little threat to his batting. Kuldeep Yadav, Harshit Rana and Axar each got stuck in as wickets kept falling – Joe Root’s delivery, bowled by Axar’s left-arm spin, was the killer blow – and the innings petered to a close. Rana, who has replaced the injured Jasprit Bumrah for the Champions Trophy, dismissed Harry Brook for the third time in the series, which saw him make his ODI debut in Nagpur. From here, the end was not far off as each of India’s bowlers took at least one wicket, and four of them pocketing a couple each.
