Jonny Bairstow, Ben Stokes bring carnage on Indian bowlers to set up another series decider

England brought a blood bath on Indian bowlers to chase down in overs with wickets in their hands. The top order from England comprising of Jason Roy, Jonny Bairstow and Ben Stokes put on a brutal display of six-hitting to leave India with no chance of coming back and shell shocked while defending 337 runs.

The start from Roy and Bairstow was similar to the start in the first game but the difference was that one of them went ahead to score a big century. Add to that, equally swashbuckling innings from the new number three Ben Stokes and England annihilated India very badly. 

The tourists needed only 20 runs from the last 60 balls in the chase of 337 runs and it established the domination of England’s top order over the Indian bowling attack, especially spinners.

The duo was extremely severe against spinners as the pair of Krunal Pandya and Kuldeep Yadav were put on the sword and ended up conceding 165 runs from 16 overs without tasting any success.

India must have felt comfortable having to defend a target of 337 runs, but they were met with brutal counterattacks from the English trio at the top of the order. 

The second partnership between Ben Stokes and Jonny Bairstow was the epitome of the ultra-aggressive display of batting that Eoin Morgan had pressed on and promised to be playing with even in the face of a loss in the first ODI.

Indians failed to pick up an early wicket yet again as Roy as the openers started off cautiously against the swing of Bhuvneshwar Kumar and the pace of Prasidh Krishna but the onslaught was inevitable.

As the openers Roy and Bairstow got their eyes in, all hell broke loose with Roy going all guns blazing against Prasidh in the fifth over. The over yielded 13 runs and Roy followed it up with another couple of boundaries in the next over of Bhuvneshwar Kumar to start their long chasing effort.

Roy was getting to face a lot of balls and hence Bairstow was being overshadowed in the first powerplay. However, he did not miss out on setting staging on fire when he got the opportunity and plundered two boundaries off Sahrdul Thakur to set England up in the chase.

Kohli brought Kuldeep Yadav right after the first powerplay to show confidence in the struggling spinner. He started off on a good note and pitched balls in good areas as both Bairstow and Roy played two over phase from him and Shardul Thakur safely before going for all money once again.

Once they started going bonker against Kuldeep, there was no going back for the tourists as they matched one shot with another and the 100 runs were on the scoreboard without the separation of the openers. 

Rohit Sharma sent Roy back to the pavilion with an exceptional fielding effort to rejuvenate his teammates as an unfamiliar man for the number three—Ben Stokes was walking out to bat at the crease.

Stokes started off a big shot against Krunal Pandya while Kuldeep Yadav was settling in his spell and finished half of his quota with economical bowling.

Both Stokes and Bairstow were finding it relatively easier to score boundaries very over than the Indian batsmen before the pair of KL Rahul and Pant. At the halfway stage, England were at 167 with the loss of solitary wicket and the trouble signs were merging for Virat Kohli.

He would have hoped for a turnaround like the last game from Shardul Thakur in the middle overs, but he started with a short and wide delivery that Bairstow seamlessly dispatched for a boundary. His over was the last point in the game when India had the game in their control as Bairstow launched the attack from the very next over that never stopped for the period of the next 10 overs. The Yorkshire man appeared on a mission to leave his struggles in the Test series well behind him with a superlative hundred.

At the other end, Ben Stokes went on a six-hitting spree and deflated India with six sixes in 12 balls of Kuldeep Yadav and Krunal Pandya as the target of 337 started to appear like a stroll in the park for the tourists.

Having seen his spinners getting steamrolled around the park, Kohli brought back the new ball pair of Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Prasidh Krishna. Having gone past the 100 runs, Bairstow’s confidence was sky high and the pacer from Karnataka was treated with absolute disdain.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar finally got the better of Stokes to give India hope and when Prasidh returned to send back Bairstow and Buttler in the same over, Kohli and company would have hoped for a resurgence against the debutant Liam Livingstone and a subdued Dawid Malan.

Their hopes were in tatters soon enough as the debutant went on a rampage and took down India’s best bowler Bhuvneshwar Kumar for two sixes to end signal to Kohli that any hope of winning the game and series in this contest was all but over.

Ultimately, the score was achieved with so much ease that would ask some tough questions from the Indian team although the bowlers were not too poor in their execution and tactics.

Earlier, in an almost similar script to the first ODI of the series, England stand-in skipper Jos Buttler, who was leading the side in the absence of Eoin Morgan, won the toss and asked India to bat once again. However, like in the first game, Kohli was not unhappy at batting first.

Both sides had made changes due to injury inflicted in the last game. For India, Rishabh Pant trumped Suryakumar Yadav based on his impressive performance over the last few months, while England made three changes in their playing XI. 

Reece Topley made his comeback in place of Mark Wood whom the England team management is treating as a jewel for the raw pace he brings to the table. Liam Livingstone earned an ODI debut and Dawid Malan also came back for the injured duo of Morgan and Sam Billings.

The pitch in the first ODI supported pace and carry and another new surface for the second game offered all the same. However, England did not have the service of Wood to rattle the Indian openers Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma with the new ball. Instead, they had swing bowlers in Reece Topley who can also extract good bounce off the surface and Sam Curran. The former made good use of his skills and picked up a very important wicket of Shikhar Dhawan by edging him to Ben Stokes at second slip.

Rohit Sharma was itching to set going at the other end of the pitch and both Curran and Topley were guilty of becoming too greedy looking at the swing. Both erred by bowling too full to the Indian vice-captain and he started spanking them for fours to get India off after the fall of Dhawan. However, just when he looked set for a big one in a partnership with Virat Kohli, he found out short fine leg on a ball that deserved to be put away for four.

With Iyer out of the team and Pant’s style of play more suited to lower down the order in the view of team management, KL Rahul was promoted to the number four slot.

Both he and Kohli started building the partnership to take India to a position from where they could have gone bonkers against bowlers. The pitch was allowing big shots and they were mindful of not allowing wickets to fall in clusters in the middle over that had derailed their efforts in the last game.

But, their cautious approach allowed Jos Buttler to sneak in overs of Moeen Ali and the off-spinner was shrewd enough to deny both Rahul and Kohli any scoring opportunities and finished his quota of 10 overs giving away only 47 runs while other bowlers were to witness the carnage.

Kohli looked flawless for most of his innings except for a phase against Adil Rashid but was lucky to be dropped by his counterpart Buttler behind the wicket. The lucky ride did not last long though as Kohli once again perished after making a fifty and converting it into an elusive hundred that his enormous fan base is eagerly waiting for.

As soon as Pant walked out to bat in the middle, the momentum got turned on its head as he brought his A-game right from the word go. The left-hander started his innings that were to be an onslaught slog sweep off Rashid as India started their journey towards a big total.

KL Rahul was batting cautiously but as Pant started taking the game to the English camp, he too started to latch on to any hint of scoring opportunities. 

India reached 200 run-mark by the end of the 40th over and Pant smashed Stokes for two back to back sixes to signal what they were after in the last 10 overs. 

If Stokes’ over was any sort of attacking intent by Pant, Rahul showed he can match Pant in skills other than the wicketkeeping as Tom Curran was welcomed in the most brutal way possible in the next over. The duo plundered Tom Curran for 22 runs in that over to set a perfect platform for India to post a huge total that would take some doing even for the England batting line up that believes in an only aggressive mode of batting.

Pant reached his fifty from just 28 balls as the impetus the top order were hoping from the middle order were well on its way. In the very next over, KL Rahul reached his fifth ODI century to quell all the ‘noise’ around his bad form. He discarded the noise around after scoring a century with a gesture of closing his ears. He fell soon after his century but the work was done for the likes of Pandya brothers and Pant to take India past the par total on that pitch.

On cue, Pant and Hardik put on a display of power-hitting by smashing sixes for fun against the Curran brothers. They looked destined for some more but Pant fell in an impressive 49th over from Topley to give England some hope of restricting Indian below the 350-mark.

Since the start of the white-ball part of England’s tour of India, there have been discussions in media and among fans about the difference in approach of the sides in ODIs and T20s. 

The approach of taking the challenges head-on every ball proved to be a failure for the tourists in the last ODI and also in the T20 series before that, but the success in the second ODI of the series with the same approach will further embolden them on carrying on with the same mindset. 

For India, there will be questions about their bowling attack, but lack of intent from the top order will also emerge as a quagmire with the opening pair of Dhawan and Rohit have been guilty of eating up too many balls at the start.