India
Rohit Sharma and Suryakumar Yadav put on a 73-run partnership for the third wicket•AFP/Getty Images
Spin is king
With Rashid done by the 14th over, India held Shivam Dube back believing that the quicks would be taking over. So Buttler found reason to press Liam Livingstone to work, trusting his right-arm all-sorts even at the death. The part-timer finished with figures of 4-0-24-0. It was sign. If he was proving to be unhittable, Axar, Kuldeep and Ravindra Jadeja would be as well. India’s spin-bowling allrounders had a hand to play in getting them to 171 as well, alongside Hardik Pandya, as they struck three sixes and two fours in the last two overs bowled by Jordan and Archer.
Box office Axar
Guyana is spin-friendly. The schedule, as soon as it was announced, suggested India would play there in the semi-final. They packed their squad with spinners. Three of them found place in the XI. Each of them took turns bowling jaffas.
Axar was the game-changer. He came on immediately after Jos Buttler had whacked Arshdeep Singh for three fours in an over and with his very first ball took out the biggest threat. England’s captain went down to reverse-sweep the left-arm spinner because really in these conditions you couldn’t just sit in and play straight-bat shots. Rohit found the boundary when he took that gamble earlier. Buttler only found a toe-end to Pant.
Each of Axar’s first three overs had a wicket off the first ball. Jonny Bairstow once again choosing to stay leg side and getting bowled, and Moeen Ali’s England career potentially ending with him unsure of where the ball had gone only to realise it was right there in Pant’s hand as he broke the stumps.
Kuldeep’s redemption
England were 49 for 4 when Kuldeep got into the act, bamboozling Sam Curran, and then outsmarting Harry Brook. England were the team that took him down so hard he went off into white-ball wilderness after the 2019 ODI World Cup. Here, against a batter coming after him, and with unconventional shots to boot, he didn’t panic. Kuldeep saw Brook going down to reverse-sweep, so he shifted the line onto leg stump, and left him in a tangle, the flatter trajectory and the quicker pace also playing a part in ball evading the swing of the bat and crashing into the stumps behind.
As further sign of their impending defeat, England’s last recognised batter, Livingstone, was run-out after a mix-up with the lower order. The defending champions yielded their crown, with six of them making single-digit scores and none of them going past 25.
Alagappan Muthu is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo