England Tour of India

For the first time in covid-19 era, India played a home series. England were the first team to play in India in almost a year. For the first time in the history India was going to play a home series without fans in stadium.

The series begin with 4 match test series with first two matches to be played in Chennai and next two in Ahmedabad. India began series on a sour note by loosing the first test by a huge margin of 227 runs. It was a poor performance by Indian team considering their heroics in Australia. But from the next match team came back on track winning all the remaining three matches. India won second test by huge 317 runs, then they wrapped up the third match (pink ball test) within 2 days winning by 10 wickets and in final fourth test they won by an innings & 25 runs. By winning the test series (3-1) India also booked their ticket for World Test Championship Final against New Zealand.

After the tests it was time for T20I's. It was a battle between top two teams of T20I's and their battle was equally entertaining to watch. Similar to test series England again won the 1st T20I by 8 wickets. In 2nd match India bounced back and won the match by 7 wickets chasing down target of 165 runs inside 18 overs. England won the 3rd T20I again by 8 wickets. In 4th match India defended the target of 185 runs leveling the series. In the final deciding match Indian batsmen set up a mammoth total of 224 runs which was easily defended by the Indian bowlers. With this series win India won their 8th consecutive T20I series and stopped the winning streak of English side.

T20I's were followed by ODI series played in Pune. Again top two sides were at battle for supremacy with England being the world champions. For the first time in whole series India won the 1st match of series winning 1st ODI by 66 runs. England levelled the 3 match series by winning the 2nd ODI by 6 wickets chasing down a huge target of 337 runs. Once again it was a decider to crown the champions and once more it was India who came out victorious in a hard fought and evenly contested match by 7 runs in the final over. With the ODI series win India whitewashed the English Lions in all three formats. This series also created a record for most sixes being hit in a 3 match bilateral series.

 This series again showed the bench strength of India wherein many newcomers came in the squad and performed exceptionally well, be it Axar Patel in tests or Ishan Kishan and Suryakumar Yadav in T20I's or Prasidh Krishna and Krunal Pandya in ODI's all performed well from the very beginning. This shows that how skilled and talented our Indian team bench is that even our newcomers are able to perform against the world class opponents. And credit for this must go to BCCI for organizing such a hardcore domestic season, A-team tours and IPL which helps in development of the players.

After such a brilliant performances by Indian team it is now time for them to gear up and perform well in World T20 and again win the world tittle.