England captain Jos Buttler was all praise for India and their trio of spinners for outbowling them in the semi-final of the 2024 T20 World Cup in Guyana on Thursday. India were a class apart as they crushed England by 68 runs to enter the final of the T20I showpiece.
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Chasing 172, England were bowled out for 103 in 16.4 overs with Kuldeep Yadav and Axar Patel sharing six wickets between them.
“India certainly outplayed us,” Buttler said after the match. “We let them get 20-25 runs too many. It was a challenging surface that they played well on. They fully deserved this win.”
Two years back, India and England clashed in the semi-final of the 2022 T20 World Cup when the latter stormed to a 10-wicket win.
However, this time around, on a slow and low pitch, England suffered a batting collapse and at one stage were in danger of being bowled for under 100 before Jofra Archer (21 off 15) spared them the blushes.
“Very different conditions (than in 2022), credit to India,” Buttler said. “They played a very good game of cricket. With the rain around, didn’t expect the conditions to change too much. Don’t think it really did. They outbowled us.”
Buttler won the toss and opted to bowl first hoping that with the rain around, it will prove to be advantageous to England.
“They had an above-par score. Don’t think toss was necessarily the difference between the teams,” he said.
India spinners – Kuldeep, Axar and Ravindra Jadeja – bowled 11 overs between them and together gave just 58 runs while taking six wickets.
Interestingly, Buttler used a specialist spinner in Adil Rashid (1/25) and part-timer Liam Livingstone (0/24) but not offspinner Moeen Ali.
Buttler later rued not using Moeen given how effective the spinners proved to be.
“They’ve (India) got some fantastic spinners. In hindsight, should have bowled Moeen with the way spinners were bowling. We are really proud of everyone’s effort. We stuck together (but) came up short when it mattered the most,” he said.
India will now take on South Africa in the final this Saturday.
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