The England Cricket team has been defeated by West Indies in its first Super 8 match in the World T20 Championship played at the Pallekele International Cricket Stadium. West Indies won the match by 15 runs and managed to get two points. This was the second consecutive defeat of England in the tournament. The English team had to suffer a humiliating defeat against India in its last group stage match.
Samuel Badree was included in the West Indies XI on the place of Fiedel Edwards for this match. The weakness of the English batsmen against the spinners was exposed in the match against India and that prompted Darren Sammy to include the second spinner in the team. Dwayne Bravo who hadn’t played in the last match against Ireland due to Groin injury also came back in the team on the place of his brother Darren Bravo. There was also a change in the English team. Tim Bresnan made way for Samit Patel.
Darren Sammy won the toss and he decided to bat first. Chris Gayle took a couple of overs to get in and then, he started whacking the English bowlers all around the park. Gayle was attacked by short deliveries, but, the big Jamaican counter attacked.
He pulled Dernbach towards backward square leg and then, cut Finn over point. He was pretty sensible when Swann came on to bowl. He didn’t take any risk against the off spinner and pretty happy to give the strike to Jonson Charles who used his feet beautifully against Swann. Charles hit Swann for two towering sixes in one over.
Stuart Broad took a huge risk by introducing Samit Patel against Gayle and that move proved to be very costly for England. Gayle hit Patel out of the park thrice in one over. He was looking very dangerous. But, Swann produced the breakthrough for England. Gayle tried to sweep Swann against the spin, got a top edge and Finn made no mistake at long on.
West Indies lost three quick wickets after that. But, the young opener Charles continued to play big shots. He struggled with his timing at the start of the match, but, he played some wonderful shots towards the end.
He got out after playing a brilliant knock of 84 runs. West Indies managed to put 179 runs on the board in 20 overs.
England was off to a disastrous start in reply. Two wickets were down in the very first over. Due to those early blows, the English batsmen went into their shell.
Only 29 runs were scored in the first 6 overs. Jonny Bairstow took 29 deliveries to score 18 runs. However, Eoin Morgan and Alex hales hit some lusty blows towards the end of the match, but, that was too late. But, due to Morgan’s inning, England didn’t lose the match by a big margin and hence, their net run rate didn’t get affected that much.
England will take on New Zealand in its next match on Saturday at the same venue.