England dominated the third and deciding ODI this afternoon as Adil Rashid's brilliance with the ball and Joe Root and Eoin Morgan's patience with the bat saw them to a comfortable 8 wicket victory and 2-1 series win against India.
Match Report
Eoin Morgan once again to won what proved to be an important toss and put India into bat under cloudy skies. Headingley, a ground that is famed for it's seam and swing when the conditions are overcast, did not disappoint as far as England were concerned. England's opening bowlers Mark Wood and David Willey were very disciplined with both there line and length and limited the Indian openers in their scoring options. The pressure paid off for England when in the 6th over Rohit Sharma who had faced 18 balls for his 2 looked to flick Willey over square leg and only found Wood on the boundary.
India then rebuilt and with Willey and Wood out of the attack both Dhawan and Kholi began to give India's innings some much needed impetuous. However, just as India were beginning to edge ahead a brilliant piece of fielding cut short Dhawan's innings. Kohli turned down a single and with Dhawan half way down the pitch he was unable to get back into his ground at the non-strikers end. It was a soft dismal and Dhawan will be once again be disappointed to have got in and not gone on to get a big score. Dinesh Kartik was the next man in and he too looked in good form before he tried an expansive drive and inside edged onto his stumps.
All the while Virat Kohli the Indian captain and arguably the best ODI batsmen in the world was building what he would have hoped to be a match winning innings. Once a player of Kohli's quality has got himself in a side can hope that he makes a mistake (a rarity for Kohli) or look for a bowler to create that little bit of magic. Today it was the later with Adil Rashid bowling what must be one of the best balls of his career to completely bamboozle the Indian captain. Kohli, in over 200 career ODIs had never been bowled by a leg-spinner before. I think even he will have to hold his hands up and say that that delivery was too good for him- it would have been too good for any right handed batsman.
After the dismissal of their captain, India struggled and lost regular wickets. MS Dhoni made 42 but again at a rather sedate rate of scoring and he was just not able to go on and hit the big runs that India needed. Shardul Thakur did hit a couple of lusty blows off one Ben Stokes over to get his side up past 250 and at least give the India bowlers something to work with.
England supporters will always remember the infamous 2007 Ashes tour to Australia when Steve Harmison bowled the first ball of the series at the Gabba. It was a delivery so wide that it ended up in the hands of 2nd slip. While Bhuvneshwar Kumar's first ball today wasn't quite that bad, James Vince did very well to reach it and hit it for 4. Just like Harmison's first ball though, it did set the tone and India really struggled early on with their line and length. Bairstow in particular cashed in and raced onto to 30 from just 13 balls hitting 7 boundaries in the process. He then perished to a Thakur delivery that he chipped to short-midwicket. When James Vince was then run out following a smart piece of wicketkeeping from Dhoni, England suddenly found themselves 74-2 in the 10th over. It was clear though that the English batsmen (as has been the case in all 3 matches) were keen to get the run rate up while the Indian seamers were on and the fielding restrictions in place. The game, you felt, would always rest on how England's batsmen dealt with the Indian spinners. However, despite a couple of LBW shouts and some deliveries that did zip and spin past Root and Morgan's bat, England were able to negate the threat of Kulpeed Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal with relative ease.
Even when the Indian's finally did think that they had a breakthrough with Root stumped after some more brilliant work behind the stumps from Dhoni, the decision was over turned as Chahal had over stepped the line. Root smacked the resulting free-hit for 4 and in those 2 deliveries it pretty much summed up the 2 team's performances - England were clinical and India were lacklustre.
The only question that then remained was whether Joe Root would reach his 2nd century in consecutive matches. With Root on 96 and England needing just 2 to win, Hardik Pandya bowled a terrible wide which drew boos from the Yorkshire crowd (remember this is Joe Root's home ground). Pandya (perhaps wisely) didn't repeat the delivery and Joe Root swatted the ball to boundary to reach his century and send the Yorkies in the crowd home very happy.
Analysis
England will be delighted with the result and the series win. After the drubbing that they took in the opening match, it was very much doom and gloom for most English cricket fans who assumed that India's wrist spinners would be too much for the English batsmen. However, they have responded really well to the challenge to take an 8th straight series win and defeat an Indian side who was looking for their 10th straight series win.
For India you wonder whether they put quite the same emphasis on this series as England did. The strange performance in the run chase at Lords was followed up here by a team selection containing 3 changes that Kohli admitted revolved around giving other players a chance rather than picking their best team. Of the players that came in, i think Karthik deserves more time. Speaking to some Indian supporters they seem keen to have him in the side in place of Raina who I assume is being favoured for his ability to bowl a few overs of off-spin. Bhuvneshwar Kumar is a quality player but he was clearly not fit today. He has one of, if not the smoothest bowling action in cricket but today he really struggled to get through the crease, his pace was down and he gave the English batsmen far too many easy scoring opportunities.
There are obviously decisions to be made with the Indian middle order. I for one think Dhoni should stay. His problem is similar to Alistair Cook's or any player once they reach the Autumn of their career, they are probably not quite as good as they were when they were at their peak and as soon as they have a couple of average games the knives come out and people start stating you're too old! The real problem lies with getting the 2 other middle order players in place so that Dhoni can play around them and ideally having a little more batting in the tail which over the last 2 matches has been exposed.
I'd love to hear from Indian fans who they think should bat in India's middle order and whether there is a spot for Ravi Ashwin in the ODI team?
The pluses from this game for England will be the bowling of Willey and Wood up front which has capped off a pretty good summer for the pair. With Chris Woakes likely to be back into the team when he is fit, it has been a great chance for both these guys to show why they should get the last remaining seam bowling spot in the team. Furthermore, with Stokes out injured earlier in the season and England opting for the extra batsman it has meant that Wood and Willey have consistently been required to bowl their full allotment of overs in a match and bowl in periods when in other games they might not have needed to. England now have strength and depth in the squad and will rightly enter next year's World Cup as favourites.
Credit today must also go to Adil Rashid. I'm sure one day looking back at his career the ball he bowled to Kohli will rank as one of his finest moments he experienced in the sport. However, Rashid he has been consistently brilliant for England for the last couple of years. Questions will now inevitably be asked about why he can't do this at Test level and whether we should give him another chance. Firstly, we should remember that Adil Rashid took the decision this February not to play any red ball cricket whatsoever for either England or Yorkshire. Furthermore, while that decision was a little disappointing at the time, I actually believe that it has helped Rashid bowl even better this summer than he did last.
And so we move onto the main course - 5 Test Matches in 6 weeks. It looks to be a gruelling schedule but I'm sure that it will throw up some entertaining and highly watchable cricket between 2 great cricketing nations.
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