When KL Rahul Gets Going it is Difficult to Stop Him: Eoin Morgan

Team India registered a comfortable victory against England in the opening T20I by 8 wickets to go 1-0 up in the 3 match series. Riding on a sensational piece of wrist spin bowling by Kuldeep Yadav, India managed to restrict England to a score of 158 in their allotted 20 overs. In the 2^nd innings it was KL Rahul who continued his dream run with the bat and smashed his 2^nd T20I century to take India over the finishing line.

After being put into bat, England began pretty well as openers Jason Roy and Jos Buttler shared a 50 runs stand in 5 overs. Umesh Yadav provided the maiden breakthrough as he breached the defense of Jason Roy with a short of length delivery. Alex Hales was bamboozled quite a bit by Kuldeep and eventually fell to the chinaman bowler.

The wrist spinner wrecked havoc in his 3^rd over when he bagged the wickets of Eoin Morgan, Jonny Bairstow and Joe Root in quick succession. He bagged 3 wickets in that over and made the English batters look utterly clueless in front of his variations. He returned to bag his 5^th wicket in his final over after dismissing Buttler.

England eventually reached 159 in their allotted 20 overs. The visitors didn’t begin well and lost the wicket of Shikhar Dhawan in the opening over. However from there on it was an astonishing performance from KL Rahul which ensured India reached the target without any hiccups. He kept smashing the English bowlers all around the park and stormed his way to a brilliant century. Rahul smashed 10 fours and 5 sixes during his unbeaten knock of 101. With Rohit Sharma, he shared a huge partnership of 123 runs. However, Rohit contributed just 30. In the end, it was Virat Kohli who shared an unbeaten partnership with Rahul to seal the deal for India.

Here is what English skipper Eoin Morgan said at the post-match presentation

I think thoroughly deserved for India. Jos Buttler and Jason Roy got off to a fantastic start, but three wickets in the middle set us back and we never really gained momentum back from there. And then when a guy like KL Rahul gets going, he’s difficult to stop. Kuldeep is a terrific bowler. When the wicket is that good you have to take your options, but need to be better at that. We needed to take every half chance possible, but we didn’t and then defending 160 was always going to be difficult. Today was a tough game for our spinners, but India played well today and it just wasn’t our day. We talk about the crowds everytime before an India or a Pakistan game, the football too is going on and it is a big factor.