India Take 2-0 Lead over England after 2nd ODI

For a second match in a row, England were to swallow defeat on Indian soil and it was their batting that proved to be their let down while India were slowly but surely getting back on their feet after that rather forgettable tour of England.

Virat Kohli, Gautam Gambhir

If England failed to show anywhere near the ability they showed at home to chase 300 runs in the first ODI, they failed to set India a target hard enough to put pressure on the hosts. Where they struggled to negotiate the spin in the first match, England simply faced to cash in every time they thought they had strung a partnership together. It did not of course help that they lost the wickets of the England ODI captain, Alastair Cook, and opener, Craig Kieswetter, rather early in the match. Even when it appeared they were putting together partnership through Jonathan Trott and Kevin Pietersen, there was an inevitability about them that it would not be easy for England to set a huge total until one of them carried on till the very end of the match.

Pietersen topscored with forty-six but that itself told the story because like Trott, Ravi Bopara, Joanthan Bairstow after them, England batsmen kept getting starts but failed to convert them into a total for England that would test the Indian line up on their own turf at the Ferozeshah Kotla in Delhi. Instead Cook looked visibly disappointed as England could only manage 237 runs in their fifty overs after electing to bat first on a pitch that proved true.

For India though, the script could not have been any better. Although both, Parthiv Patel and Ajinkya Rahane, were lost early to the bowling of Tim Bresnan with the score on twenty-nine, that would be the only time when England felt that they had some hold on the Indian innings and half chances came their way only to go abegging even as India fortified their position through the solid partnership between Gautam Gambhir and Virat Kohli. Even as the England bowlers began to toil, wilting slowly under the pressure of not having enough runs to defend on board even as Kohli in particular was rather impressive in getting to the milestone of yet another century in less than the number of balls faced and Gambhir lending the weight of his experience, with eighty-four runs in a massive 209 run partnership for the third wicket that took India to their second emphatic win in the series, this time with nearly fourteen overs to spare to go 2-0 up in the series.