India’s World Twenty20 title defence came to an undignified end at Lord’s on Sunday night, with their batsmen crumbling to an aggressive English bowling performance. Chasing 154 to stay alive in the tournament, Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s 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. England’s 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, England’s quick bowlers got the short ball talking and India’s 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 doesn’t count for much in this form of the game. The opener fell trying to paddle Dmitri Mascarenhas, but couldn’t clear short fine-leg. Jadeja’s swings and misses got him 25 off 35 balls. The third-wicket partnership, 38 runs off 42 deliveries.

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