Tragedy strikes when least expected. It was a day when everything went wrong with Virat Kohli and men. We are quite sure that India would want to forget this match like a bad dream. Terrible start, batsmen wasting too many balls, bad bowling, sloppy fielding, wicketless spinners like Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav and the list went on for India. With 2019 World Cup just less than 20 games away, India will have to have questions to be addressed and several problems to be solved.

The day started with England winning the toss and with an intention of giving everyone a chance, Kohli dropped KL Rahul and Umesh Yadav from the team. Putting India to bat first, Rohit made way to the pavilion after scoring a couple of runs from 18 balls. Shikhar Dhawan and Virat Kohli contributed with 71 runs for the team. Dhawan shortly got run out on 44 and that reminded me of a teaching by Ajay Jadeja long ago. He had rightly said that when the team loses their openers owing to a run-out, it is quite likely that the team would end up losing.  (Check out the video highlights of the match here).

Dinesh Karthik and Kohli both made 41 runs for the team. Adil Rashid snapped a couple of crucial wickets - Karthik and Virat Kohli. Raina too made way to the dressing room scoring 1 run from 4 balls. Sadly after this, Dhoni stuck around but couldn’t score and wasted too many 66 balls to get 42 runs. In the end, it was Shardul Thakur’s 22 runs from 13 balls that helped India get to the score of 256 runs. (Check out the full scorecard here)

Bhuvneshwar Kumar who kept bowling outside the off stump gave away 36 runs at the start of the innings. India’s most reliable spinning duo Kuldeep Yadav and Chahal went wicketless for the team. England lost only a couple of men from their side i.e James Vince and Jonny Bairstow on 27 and 30 runs respectively. After the match, Virat Kohli said that they were 20-30 runs short and thus could not win the game. Joe Root made a century while Morgan made 88 runs. Full marks to the guests who outplayed India in all the departments of the game.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jul 18, 2018 01:12 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).