Why did Team India lose 0-4 to England? There isn’t a single straightforward answer to this question. It’s clear that batting let us down in almost every game. India’s bowling reserves were depleted. No Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya to begin with, and then losing Harshit Rana and Varun Chakaravarthy midway through.
In these circumstances, the batting should’ve stepped up. Barring Pandya and Suryakumar Yadav, the batting line-up was the same. Excluding Shreyas Iyer, the top six was the same as the title-winning T20 World Cup 2026 team. But it all went wrong. The biggest reason for the batting failure was instability, and it all started at the top.
India’s batting instability
After the rain-affected match in Durham, Sanju Samson was dropped. The wicketkeeper-batter was granted just three chances before getting cut loose. The shiniest toy in the cricket world, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, was brought in for him. But he didn’t perform great either. So, the management chucked him away for the last game.
Samson returned and played a cameo of 27 (14) when India was chasing 258. Who could fault him? He never looked at ease. And how can he? You’ve bred insecurity by dropping him after 3 failures and not selecting him for the next T20I series against Zimbabwe. But once he was left out, it made no sense to drop Sooryavanshi, a 15-year-old, who has been selected to travel to Harare.
What was the reasoning behind bringing Samson in? One assumes that the management, Shreyas and Gautam Gambhir, didn’t want to lose 0-4. The series was lost anyway, but 1-3 looks better on paper. But that didn’t happen. Probably because Samson and others who’ve been constantly shuffled at different batting positions fear for their spots and are playing it a bit safe.
Why was Vaibhav Sooryavanshi dropped?
After the clean sweep, Shreyas was asked about why Sooryavanshi was dropped. We’ve seen that the teenager struggled against the shorter deliveries, but Southampton was a great batting track and didn’t offer much bounce. These were perfect conditions for him, but Shreyas and Gambhir believed Samson was the right fit despite him not playing for India again until the Asian Games 2026.
“We needed to try the best combination that would be perfect for these conditions and also wanted a right-hander to go on with Abhishek (Sharma). So, that was one of the major reasons. And if you see, I was the only one out of all the left-handers who was a right-hander,” Shreyas told reporters in the post-match press conference in Southampton. “We wanted to try a different combination that would be suitable for this particular game. And he’s (Sanju Samson) a gun batsman. He has won so many series for us in the past,” he added.
The Indian captain also stated that the lineup lacked right-handed batters. This is certainly true. In the fourth match, the Men in Blue had just one right-handed batter in the top eight. So, they brought Samson and Suryansh Shedge in for the last game. But one wonders where this logic was in the second game. Or why wasn’t Abhishek Sharma rested for Samson? No one asked him these follow-ups, but these are the burning questions we need answers for.
