{"id":83,"date":"2026-07-13T09:00:06","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T09:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abhishek.missionanimalcare.in\/?p=83"},"modified":"2026-07-14T05:56:45","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T05:56:45","slug":"sports-pulse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abhishek.missionanimalcare.in\/?p=83","title":{"rendered":"Sports Pulse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

IND vs ENG T20: Why India\u2019s IPL-built batting failed against England\u2019s bounce<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Six defeats and a washout across Shreyas Iyer\u2019s first seven matches as captain. England put the last one beyond doubt in Southampton on Saturday, sweeping the series 4-0, Jos Buttler and Harry Brook adding 233 for the second wicket, the highest second-wicket partnership in T20I history, and taking with it the world No. 1 T20I ranking India had held since 2022. The series is over. What it was actually testing, is not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two weeks ago, before a ball was bowled at Durham, the argument was that India\u2019s batting problem wasn\u2019t personnel, it was method. Built entirely around bat speed and boundary hitting, it asks one thing of a batter: commit early, trust the ball to arrive where it\u2019s supposed to. Extra bounce or seam movement punishes exactly that pre-determined committing. Four matches later, the claim holds up, confirmed by a coach who has taught power-hitting technique for years, and by India\u2019s own captain, independently describing the same failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Julian Wood, who has worked with T20 batters across several franchise leagues, watched the collapse and diagnosed a refusal to adjust, not a lack of skill. \u201cThe key thing playing over here is the bounce. In the IPL<\/a>, the wickets are very flat, the boundaries are small and the ball sort of sits up waist height. Whereas over here, it is higher than that. One thing the Indians are very good at, is they know how to use the pace, not fight the pace. The impression I got here was that they sort of tried to fight the pace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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He is specific about why England punished it. \u201cSomeone like Jofra (Archer), (Josh) Tongue, they hit the pitch hard, they run in and almost smash the ball into the pitch. On certain pitches, you can\u2019t play those cross-batted shots.\u201d The stats back it up: England\u2019s pace bowlers took 12 wickets across the five matches specifically by going short, not an isolated tactic but the plan, run again and again because it kept working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This played out match by match. In Manchester, England introduced spin early to remove Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, and it worked, he was stumped inside five overs, an over-eager charge down the pitch rather than a shot beaten by pace. \u201cHe used the pace, didn\u2019t fight against it,\u201d Wood says of the one occasion Sooryavanshi did find the adjustment, working a short ball to third man. \u201cYou can\u2019t criticise him, the experienced batsmen should have done this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Bristol, England had widened the trap.\u00a0Abhishek Sharma\u00a0and\u00a0Shivam Dube\u00a0fell to mis-hits off spin; Tilak Varma and\u00a0Washington Sundar\u00a0were both caught off slower-ball bouncers, pace taken off rather than added to. By Southampton, chasing 258, Sanju Samson discovered the same trap from a different angle: recalled to open, he went after Sam Curran\u2019s slower ball expecting more pace, and picked out a fielder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t one method beating India. It was India\u2019s single-gear approach, their only method being tested by several weapons in turn, pace, spin, bounce, the absence of pace, and failing every one of them the same way. Curran nailed the bias after Manchester: \u201cThe batters are strong on leg side, Archer was not letting them play there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wood calls it fighting the angle instead of going with it. \u201cYou set yourself up to hit the ball straight. If it\u2019s not straight, you go with the angle.\u201d Bowler and coach, working independently, reached the same diagnosis.
Wood also has an example of what doing it right looks like, even though the player in question didn\u2019t feature this series: Rohit Sharma\u2019s pull shot, the technical answer to the exact problem those 12 dismissals describe. \u201cHe gets his hands up very high, gets in good positions, extends his hands through the ball\u2026 he gets on top of the ball.\u201d Control, not equal force. \u201cHim and Virat (Kohli) know exactly how to play. They\u2019ve toured England before.\u201d The second gear \u2014 this order hasn\u2019t built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The numbers from Bristol show this isn\u2019t about India lacking gears entirely, only how narrowly those gears are shared. Iyer made an unbeaten 80 there, 44 of those runs off Adil Rashid alone, 27.85 percent of India\u2019s total scored off one bowler by one batter; off everyone else, just 36 from 33 balls. When the batting worked at all this series, it was one player finding that range while the rest kept swinging for the shot the IPL rewards and England had already taken away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNobody\u2019s doubting their ability. Nobody\u2019s doubting their talent,\u201d Wood says. \u201cYou\u2019ve just got to be a bit smarter when it comes to playing overseas.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Southampton, without prompting, without a coach\u2019s technical language, Iyer described the same problem in his own words, at the end of a tour with no matches left to prove it in. \u201cWe lost wickets in a cluster. We were going after the chase rather than building partnerships. We have to target bowlers, take time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same sentence, arrived at independently, from the dressing room. India shed one kind of caution in 2023 and became champions playing at only one speed. The question this series was actually asking, and the one the captain answered without being asked directly, is whether the side that built one ferocious gear has any idea yet how to find a second one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

IND vs ENG T20: Why India\u2019s IPL-built batting failed against England\u2019s bounce Six defeats and a washout across Shreyas Iyer\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"rttpg_featured_image_url":null,"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"abhishek","author_link":"https:\/\/abhishek.missionanimalcare.in\/?author=1"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"Sports<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"IND vs ENG T20: Why India\u2019s IPL-built batting failed against England\u2019s bounce Six defeats and a washout across Shreyas Iyer\u2019s […]","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abhishek.missionanimalcare.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abhishek.missionanimalcare.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abhishek.missionanimalcare.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abhishek.missionanimalcare.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abhishek.missionanimalcare.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abhishek.missionanimalcare.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88,"href":"https:\/\/abhishek.missionanimalcare.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions\/88"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abhishek.missionanimalcare.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abhishek.missionanimalcare.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abhishek.missionanimalcare.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}