Indias World Twenty20 title defence came to an undignified end at Lords on Sunday night,with their batsmen crumbling to an aggressive English bowling performance. Chasing 154 to stay alive in the tournament,Mahendra Singh Dhonis team fell three runs short,their second straight defeat leaving them with nothing but pride to play for against South Africa on Tuesday. Over two weeks in England,including the warm-ups,India have beaten a ragged Pakistan,the inexperienced Ireland and a ridiculously poor Bangladesh. Against New Zealand,West Indies and England last night,they fell comfortably short. Englands victory margin did not reflect how far behind India were. There will be time for post-mortems,but first impressions are that they should have seen it coming. The West Indian quicks had them hopping around on Friday night,and they got more of the same on Sunday. As Fidel Edwards and Dwayne Bravo had done,Englands quick bowlers got the short ball talking and Indias batting bullies found themselves uncomfortably shuffling backwards. Rohit Sharma fell to the bouncer,again; while he had top-edged Edwards to square-leg two days ago,he bottom-edged Ryan Sidebottom on to his stumps this time. Suresh Raina came and went quickly,not getting any meat behind his pull shot,the ball looping to Luke Wright in the deep. Gautam Gambhir and Ravindra Jadeja who replaced Pragyan Ojha in the XI then got the kind of peppering normally seen in grainy,black-and-white Test match footage. They weaved and ducked and took blows on the body; when the ball was full,they were caught on the back foot. Gambhir and Jadeja survived the blasts,but survival doesnt count for much in this form of the game. The opener fell trying to paddle Dmitri Mascarenhas,but couldnt clear short fine-leg. Jadejas swings and misses got him 25 off 35 balls. The third-wicket partnership,38 runs off 42 deliveries. Yuvraj Singh,Dhoni and Yusuf Pathan gave it a mighty go,but too much time had been consumed rebuilding,too much left for the hitters to do. Earlier,having put the hosts in,Indias replacements seemed right on the money. RP Singh,in for Irfan Pathan,got rid of the big-hitting Wright in the second over of the innings,while Jadeja got one to skid under Ravi Boparas bat to break the stumps and an irritating 71-run partnership. Pietersen looked in murderous touch against Indias pacers,flicking Zaheer over square-leg,squeezing Ishant through mid-wicket and then thumping RP down the ground with such power that the ball had bounced into the boundary boards before the bowler could look. This was the former England captain at his contemptuous best. But after he fell,India clawed their way back into the contest. Owais Shah rotated the strike well enough,but that wasnt exactly what England needed at the time. Paul Collingwood tried to reverse sweep Zaheer Khan and fell leg-before for seven. He must have felt rather embarrassed watching replays; stranger shots have seldom been attempted,even in T20. The biggest disappointment of all for the hosts,though,had to be Mascarenhas. The man who had once dispatched Yuvraj for five sixes in an over scratched his way to an inexplicable 27-ball 25 slow even by ODI standards. On the night though,it was more than enough.
