A new year, a new format, a different captain and confronting a man leading his country for the first time as full-time ODI captain: England had reason to believe that their limited overs tour of India would be less dispiriting than their Test sojourn. And yet, for all these changes, the abiding sense at Pune was of continuity, as Virat Kohli once again showcased his credentials as the best all-format batsman in the world game, and England left perplexed by how their legitimate victory hopes had given way to a comprehensive defeat.
England also confronted an unfamiliar foe: Kedar Jadhav, a diminutive 31-year-old who had previously only made an international half-century against Zimbabwe. Not that Jadhav lost much by comparison with his captain, decimating England with clean hitting down the ground, legside flicks of wonderful precision and silky late cuts like that to reach a barnstorming century, off just 65 balls. It was all the more satisfying - and celebrated all the more rapturously - for coming at his home ground.
So the bumper crowd at Pune were left not only with the result they wanted, but a pulsating and widely oscillating route there. The two sides took turns to come back from the depths: India from the hopelessness of being four wickets down and needing a further 288 to win, a position from which only one ODI in history had ever been won; and then England from the despair India’s fifth-wicket stand of 200 in 24.3 overs, through sheer bloody mindedness and perseverance from Jake Ball and Ben Stokes. In the event, though, England’s riposte came too late to overcome the damage wrought between Kohli and Jadhav.
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