India’s Virat Kohli, right, shake hands with England’s captain Jos Buttler at the end of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup second semifinal cricket match between England and India at the Guyana National Stadium in Providence, Guyana. (AP | PTI)
Hindsight is 20/20, they say, and after the Twenty20 World Cup semifinal in Guyana on Thursday, England captain Jos Buttler rued one aspect he wished he had done differently.
India outplayed defending champions at the Providence Stadium on a pitch that had assistance for spinners and kept low regularly. Batting first, Rohit Sharma powered his side to what felt then like an above-par 171 in a rain-hit first innings. And it proved too far out of reach for Buttler’s champion side as they lost by 68 runs. Buttler’s decision to bowl first, citing the possibility of weather playing a part later on, proved to be less than ideal with Rohit correctly estimating the pitch will get much tougher to bat as the match went on.
“I thought we bowled a little bit without luck in the powerplay, a few close calls there. But, yes, I think the benefit of hindsight and reflecting, I would have got Moeen [Ali] in the game of course,” Buttler said after the match.
A defining factor in the match was how well Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav (3 wickets each) and Ravindra Jadeja bowled. The trio combined for 11 overs, 58 runs and 6 wickets. Buttler, meanwhile, employed just two spinners in Adil Rashid and Liam Livingstone, both of who bowled tidily for 49 runs in their 8 overs with the former dismissing Rohit Sharma.
Buttler however insisted that he had no second thoughts about bowling first, even in hindsight. He was asked if there was anything he would have done differently in selection or at the toss.
“Not at all,” the captain said. “We thought long and hard about selection, about whether we kept the same balance that we’d been playing with that had been working well, or did we need four seamers on that particular wicket. I think that was a really tough call that we made and we ended up sticking with what we had. I think India played a really good game of cricket, whatever team or whatever happened at the toss – they were going to be a tough team to beat and we had to be at our best if we were going to win the game and we were short of our best today.”
India will now take on South Africa in the final on Saturday in Barbados.
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