Colombo: Off-spinner Harbhajan Singh made a memorable comeback as a India relied on a clinical all-round performance to thrash defending champions England by a whopping 90-run margin in their final group league match of the World Twenty20 on Sunday.
Put into bat, India posted a challenging 170 for four, riding on a superb unbeaten 55 from Rohit Sharma and useful contributions from Gautam Gambhir (45) and Virat Kohli (40).
The two comeback men – Harbhajan and Piyush Chawla – then spun a web around the England batsmen to bowl them out for a paltry 80 in 14.4 overs as they accounted for six wickets for 25 runs in the eight overs between them.
Man-of-the-Match Harbhajan had splendid figures of 4/12 with two wicket-maiden overs as England were totally clueless against the duo.
This was India’s biggest victory margin in terms of runs in any T20 match.
Playing his first international match in more than a year, Harbhajan got the ball to turn appreciably and also found the zip of the pitch. The off-breaks were turning viciously and the straighter one was equally lethal.
He bowled Eoin Morgan with a superb arm-ball and then got Tim Bresnan to sweep against the turn. Jos Butler got a classical off-break from the spinner while fellow offie Graeme Swann had no clue about the straighter one.
Earlier, Rohit finally came good in an international match as he planned his innings to perfection, hitting an unbeaten 55 off 33 balls with five fours and a slashed six off Jade Dernbach.
Interestingly, Indian captain MS Dhoni chose to gamble with Irfan Pathan used as an opener in place of an injured Virender Sehwag, but that flopped as the left-hander could only manage eight runs before being bowled.
“The reason why we opened with Irfan Pathan is because he’s gutsy and picked up challenges, it allowed our middle order to bat in the same positions, and the response from the spinners was brilliant,” Dhoni said.
“We thought ‘let’s go back to what our strengths are’, gave both our spinners a fair chance and now we’ve got a [selection] problem as they both played well. The interests of the team will come first, as the players who missed out today have also won a lot of games for India.”
“It was poor all round,” said England captain Stuart Broad. “We were pretty happy with 170 but we didn’t get it right with the bat at all and India got it very right. We played across the line a bit too much wheareas against Afghanistan we struck the ball very straight.
“I’ve seen the guys play spin extremely well. We’ve had a really bad day today but we still get on the bus to Kandy tomorrow for the Super Eights. We’ve got a job to do to refocus but I don’t think the confidence will take too much a knock from this.”
This match was England’s heaviest defeat in terms of runs in a T20 match and their score of 80 is also their lowest, besting the 88 they made against India last year at the Oval. (PTI)