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India’s bowling unit peformed decently till the semi-final where they had no answer to England’s Buttler, Hales

The aftershocks of the sustained assault by Jos Buttler and Alex Hales were felt the following morning too as India’s cricketers left Adelaide in batches on Friday, their Melbourne dreams in tatters.

The ferocity of the English openers’ onslaught seemed to catch India unawares. It’s not as if they weren’t aware of the potential for mayhem Buttler and Hales possessed, but when the openers lay into them with unconcealed glee, India had no answers. 168 wasn’t the most imposing total, but it was still runs on the board in a knockout semifinal. The ease with which India allowed England to overhaul that tally was among the most disappointing aspects of Thursday night’s ten-wicket capitulation in the second semi-final of the T20 World Cup.

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Impressive in league stage

Apart from one brief spell when Litton Das took them to the cleaners, also in Adelaide, India’s bowling had been significantly above average in the tournament. Arshdeep Singh slipped into the role of the spearhead effortlessly, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Mohammed Shami provided solidity and support with their experience and Hardik Pandya relished testing out the bounce as the vastness of the outfields ensured horizontal-bat strokes carried an element of risk. The spinners didn’t have too much of a role, but R Ashwin was handy without being overly threatening.

That’s why it was hard to put a finger on why India were so much off the boil in the semis. True, the surface had lost its tackiness and become excellent for batting and there wasn’t too much assistance by way of swing or lateral movement, but the inability to keep a lid on the rate of scoring, which in turn might have led to a breakthrough, was all too glaring.

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England offered no respite

Only in two of the 16 overs that England needed to rein the target in was a boundary not struck—the ninth from Pandya, which included an all-run four as Shami and Bhuvneshwar made a mess of tag-team fielding, and the 15th from Axar Patel, who was tidy as it rained boundaries around him. Ten sixes and 13 fours in 16 overs is a damning indictment of the Indian bowling, which on the night might not have knocked even a 10-pin over.

“We tried to attack a little bit with our lengths up front. We thought that was a tactic, they played that really well,” a shell-shocked head coach Rahul Dravid said. “The ball didn’t swing here probably as much as it has in other parts of Australia or in other conditions. That played a little bit into their hands, and class players like that, both Buttler and Hales, their partnership was fantastic. Even when our spinners came on a wicket that we thought we might be able to control the game, they counter-attacked and put our spinners under a lot of pressure.”

India succumbed to that pressure, turning the semifinal into embarrassing one-way traffic.

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