England would have thought a new skipper will bring them some luck and that’s how it turned out.
Eoin Morgan won the toss and elected to bowl against India in the first Twenty20 International.
Pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar was back in the side along with Shardul Thakur.
Also, opener Rohit Sharma was rested for the first two games.
While England picked just one spinner in Adil Rashid, India picked three – leg-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal and all-rounders, Washington Sundar and Axar Patel.
Left-hander Shikhar Dhawan opened alongside KL Rahul but the plan went awry.
The first over by Mark Wood led to a succession of dot balls and Rahul was castled by Jofra Archer with the score at 2, in the second over.
Kohli’s batting horror show continued when he fell to Rashid for a duck.
At 3 for 2, India was in a precarious position.
All eyes were on Rishabh Pant, the man of the moment and he didn’t disappoint, at least for a while, slamming a furious 21 off 23 balls, the highlight being a fabulously struck six off Archer.
The only innings of note came from Shreyas Iyer, who looked in fine fettle.
But for his innings of 67 in 48 balls, which contained 8 fours and a six, India would not have managed even three figures.
England got their selection spot on, after the fiasco of the test series. Adil Rashid was outstanding with just 14 conceded off 3 overs.
Mark Wood and Archer also gave away just 20 and 23 runs respectively and shared 4 wickets amongst them.
England break no sweat
England made light of their target of 125, aided by some fine batting by openers Buttler and Jason Roy.
They added 72 for the first wicket in just 8 overs before Buttler fell to Chahal.
Roy looked in a hurry to finish the match, smashing 49 off just 32 balls before Sundar got him lbw.
There were no further alarms for England as Bairstow and Malan took England home.
Malan ended the match with a muscular maximum off Sundar.
This was 15th T20 match between the 2 countries, with India having won 7 of those.
It looks likely that India will shake up the squad for the 2nd match.
Our guess is – Surya Yadav might come in for KL Rahul who looked a bit out of touch.
India: Virat Kohli (C), KL Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan, Shreyas Iyer, Rishabh Pant, Hardik Pandya, Washington Sundar, Axar Patel, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Shardul Thakur and Yuzvendra Chahal
England: Eoin Morgan(C), Jason Roy, Jos Buttler, Dawid Malan, Jonny Bairstow, Ben Stokes, Sam Curran, Jofra Archer, Chris Jordan, Adil Rashid and Mark Wood.
