Shreyas Iyer’s side arrive in Nottingham looking to hit back after Jacob Bethell’s unbeaten 76 swung the second T20I, with Ravi Bishnoi’s place under scrutiny and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi still waiting for a debut.
England moved 1-0 up in the five match series on Saturday, chasing down 191 at Old Trafford with six balls to spare. Bethell’s unbeaten 76 off 46 balls, an innings he later called one of his favourites, settled the contest in England’s favour. Iyer’s side had set a competitive total built around a middle order partnership, only to watch the same middle overs come apart with the ball in hand.
The bowling attack carries most of the concern heading into Trent Bridge. Ravi Bishnoi sent down three back foot no balls in his four overs at Old Trafford, handing England extra deliveries at a stage when the game was still there to be won. “Three no balls from a spinner in a T20 is the kind of thing that changes a match without anyone really noticing until it’s too late,” said one analyst. “It’s not just the free run, it’s the free hit that comes with it.” India picked three frontline spinners for the series opener and again for the second match, a call that looks harder to defend after Bishnoi’s afternoon.
Sharma’s Form The One Constant
Abhishek Sharma remains the batter India can build around. He has scored 347 runs against England at a strike rate above 219 across his last seven innings against this opposition, and Sam Curran named him as the format’s leading batter after the Manchester defeat. “He changes the way you have to set a field before he’s even walked out,” a fan said. “You end up defending a total that hasn’t been scored yet.” Tilak Varma’s late hitting at Old Trafford, an unbeaten 24 that pushed India past 190, offers another point in the tourists’ favour going into a ground where boundaries tend to come cheaply.
Speaking to Bookies.com, whose independent reviews cover the best betting sites in India, one analyst noted: “India’s batting has scored enough in both matches so far. The problem has been stopping England doing the same, and that’s a bowling conversation, not a batting one.”
India went into the opening match of the series as clear favourites, with 1xBet pricing them at 1.78 to win the tour opener at Chester le Street. That washout, followed by defeat at Old Trafford, has narrowed the gap in bookmakers’ assessments of the five match series considerably, even with India still ranked the world’s number one T20I side.
Team Think Tank Weighs Changes
Head coach Gautam Gambhir and the India management have so far resisted calls to hand a debut to Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, the reigning IPL top scorer with 776 runs at a strike rate of 237.30. India’s bowling coach, Morne Morkel, indicated before the second T20I that the think tank would make only minor changes to the side, a stance now facing its first real test. “Sometimes the hardest team to pick is the one that’s already won a World Cup with this method,” one supporter said. “You want the same guys to come right, not to change the method after two games.”
Trent Bridge has hosted plenty of high scoring T20 cricket down the years, and both sides have batting units capable of making the most of it. India go into Tuesday needing a response rather than a reaction, and the balance between the spin trio and the extra hitting Sooryavanshi could offer will likely define the next three matches as much as anything Bethell produced at Old Trafford.
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