Brendon McCullum Baseball India vs England: India has defeated England by 7 wickets in the first T20 match played in Kolkata. From this match, Brendon McCullum formally took over as the coach of England’s white ball team. In the last few years, the England Test team under McCullum had been playing baseball style. In such a situation, there were speculations that due to McCullum’s aggressive strategies, England would give a tough competition to Team India in the first T20 match, but in reality nothing like this happened.
baseball left behind
It has been a long standing problem of the England team that they struggle against spin bowling in the middle overs of white ball matches. Something similar has happened this time too. Arshdeep Singh gave initial shocks to England by taking the early wickets of Phil Salt and Ben Duckett. The partnership between Harry Brook and Jos Buttler had just reached 48 runs, when Varun Chakraborty’s spinning balls dismissed Harry Brook and Liam Livingstone in the 8th over. Amidst the expectations of baseball, the entire England team could score only 132 runs.
Morale boosting victory for Gautam Gambhir
On one hand, Brendon McCullum did not get a good start as the white ball coach of England. But on the other hand, this victory would have been a morale boost for Gautam Gambhir and Team India. Recently, the Indian team had lost 1-3 at the hands of Australia in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Whereas under the coaching of Gautam Gambhir, India had lost 2 consecutive test series, hence this victory was a boost of courage for Gambhir also. Gambhir had recently also reached Kalighat temple in Kolkata to pay obeisance. Let us also tell that Team India did not include Mohammed Shami in the playing eleven, everyone was shocked by this decision, but in the end India’s strategy of going with three spinners proved to be effective.
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