England captain Jos Buttler expressed his disappointment at his team losing the five-match T20I series 1-4 to India but said they want to continue to play their current style of aggressive brand of cricket despite the setback.
England came to India with Brandon McCullum taking over as all-format coach and pledging to promote his no-holds-barred style of aggressive cricket, the Bazball, to the shorter format. However, England failed to get the expected results and barring the third match in Rajkot, which they won by 26 runs, struggled to impose their game on the hosts.
England were hammered for 247 runs on electing to bowl in the fifth and final match at the Wankhede with Indian opener Abhishek Sharma hammering a 54-ball 135, operating at a strike rate of nearly 200 throughout his knock. In reply, England collapsed to 97 all out in just 10.3 overs with Mohammed Shami, Vaun Chakravarthy, Abhishek Sharma and Shivam Dube doing the damage, losing the match by a massive 150-run margin with just about half the balls to go.
However, Buttler said they were committed to this style of play and would hope to execute it better in future.
“We’re disappointed to lose the series, but we’ve done some things well and some things we want to improve on. We want to keep committing to this style of cricket and execute better,” said Buttler after the match on Sunday.
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Though England fared poorly in the series and lost 1-4, Buttler said there are a few positives that they will take into the three-match ODI series starting in Nagpur on February 6. He said the positives for his side were the bowling effort of Brydon Carse and Mark Wood and hoped his players would have learned a few things by playing in front of huge crowds in India.
“Some of the guys’ bowling performances – even today, Brydon Carse and Mark Wood were outstanding. India are a fantastic side, especially at home, and we’re better for the experience, the experience of great crowds like this at the Wankhede,” said Buttler.
The England captain termed Abhishek Sharma’s knock as one of the best he has seen. He has watched the opener from Punjab batting in the Indian Premier League (IPL) and said he remembered Australian Travis Head’s praise of Abhishek after they played together for Sunrisers Hyderabad.
“I’ve seen a lot of cricket, and I thought Abhishek’s innings today were one of the best. I think credit to Abhishek Sharma. I thought that was as clean a ball striking as I’ve seen. I thought he played fantastically well. I thought he played brilliantly well.
“It can be difficult sometimes when a player gets on a roll and they play as well as he did. And you know, looking back at the last IPL, he and Travis (Head) said with the same, you know, the top of the order for Sunrise. And obviously, he’s brought that into India. And as I say, he played a brilliant innings. And yeah, sometimes you want to credit the opposition. You always think of what, what more could you do? What how could we get him out?” said Butler.
