Arshdeep Singh raised hopes with the early dismissal of Jos Buttler as India stayed sharp for the first two overs of England’s innings, with the hosts chasing a target of 159 to win the series. However, all of it was thrown out of the window when England captain Harry Brook went after the bowlers and found able support from Phil Salt at the other end. India’s bowlers kept piling up no-balls and wides and fielding errors did them no favours. In the end, India gave up, as was evident from the fact that they kept the field back and allowed England to take a single when they needed one run to win.
Shreyas Iyer called his team’s performance “atrocious” after the third T20I and he showed them how it’s done in the fourth against England by smashing an unbeaten 80 in 49 balls in Bristol. He had little help from the other end though as India’s IPL stars continued to struggle to get any meaningful returns in English conditions and India got to a score of 158/7 in their 20 overs.
India were once again been hamstrung by their inability to deal with short balls as Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Ishan Kishan and Abhishek Sharma all fell trying to pull. In the case of Abhishek, he fell pulling to spinner Adil Rashid, as opposed to Sooryavanshi and Kishan who fell to Archer and Tongue respectively. Captain Shreyas Iyer and Shivam Dube then dropped anchor and looked to amp down the aggression. Although that meant India have avoided another embarassing collapse, the two batters eventually felt the need to go for the big shots. Dube ended up falling while trying to do so.