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Men in Blue's skipper Rohit Sharma lost his cool when Mohammed Shami's fielding stunt gifted England 2 extra runs in the T20 World Cup's semifinal match at Adelaide Oval on Thursday (November 10).
England annihilated an out-of- sync India by 10 wickets to sail into the World Cup final as Alex Hales and Jos Buttler's relentless hitting mortified Rohit Sharma's clueless attack. It was Hardik Pandya (68 off 33 balls), whose fearless hitting took India to 168/6 but it was just about a par-score at the Adelaide Oval. England captain Buttler (80 not out) set the tone with three boundaries off Bhuvneshwar Kumar's opening over but it was Hales (86 not out off) who butchered the Indian attack into submission.
Since the word go, India never looked dominant even once in the game. Beside ordinary batting and ineffective bowling, there were also couple of poor fielding effort by Team India in the crunch game.
During the ninth over of England's innings, Hales and Buttler ran four runs as Mohammed Shami made a mess of things. Shami, who was deployed at fine-leg, tried to pass the ball to Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who came racing in from third man.
However, Shami's throw went over Bhuvneshwar's head as Buttler and Hales collected two extra runs. Following this, India skipper Rohit looked furious over Shami's approach and looked quite animated while expressing his exasperation.
Here's the video…
The target was achieved in just 16 overs as England batting line-up clicked for the first time in the tourney and what a day it chose to brings its A game to the fore. England opening duo gave India's star-studded line-up a lesson in how to build a T20 innings: that there is only one way, the offensive way.
It was one match that was decided in Powerplay as India managed only 38 runs in six overs as the archaic style of safety-first approach hurt them terribly.
In complete contrast, England's top order which looked shaky throughout the league stage, smashed 63 in their six overs. The match was won and lost then and there.
Bhuvneshwar and Arshdeep Singh didn't get enough swing up front and team management's fascination to play Axar Patel (0/30 in 4 overs) and Ravichandran Ashwin (0/27 in 2 overs) ahead of Yuzvendra Chahal backfired badly.
The success England spinner Adil Rashid (1/20 in 4 overs) on the same track added insult to the injury.
By the time, Buttler hit Mohammed Shami (0/39 in 3 overs) down the ground for one of his three sixes, the Adelaide Oval stands wore a desolate half-empty look.
And the over-throws and the dropped catch by Suryakumar Yadav typified a day when everything that could go wrong went wrong for India.
