The England national cricket team led by Jos Buttler and the India national cricket team led by Rohit Sharma faced off in the second semi-final of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2024 at the Providence Stadium, Georgetown, Guyana on Thursday, 27 June. .
Jos Buttler was lucky and won the toss in the high voltage match. England decided to bowl first and got off to a good start. Despite removing Virat Kohli and Rishabh Pant early, the Three Lions were under pressure as Rohit Sharma and Suryakumar Yadav batted exceptionally well. In the end, England allowed India to score 171 for 7. Chris Jordan shone with 3 wickets while Reece Topley, Jofra Archer, Sam Curran and Adil Rashid took a wicket each.
As far as run-chasing is concerned, England were absolutely poor with the bat. The openers could not give the team a flying start and the middle order could not survive against the strong Indian bowling unit. The Three Lions were bowled out for 103 runs and lost the match by 68 runs.
After the match, Jos Buttler praised India for playing great cricket throughout the 20 overs and said the Men in Blue outscored them. Michael Atherton also asked him to reveal the reason why England chose to bowl first, which many considered the wrong decision. Buttler explained:
“India certainly outplayed us. We let them make 20-25 runs too many. It was a challenging surface, they played well. They deserved this win. Very different conditions (to 2022), credit to India. They played a very good game of cricket With the rain around, I didn’t expect the conditions to change too much.
“They outbowled us. They had an above-average score. Don’t think that the bowling was necessarily the difference between the teams. They have some fantastic spinners. In retrospect, they should have bowled Moeen in that innings with the way the bowling was being done. We are very proud of everyone’s effort. We stuck together and fell short when it mattered most.”
How Jos Buttler’s England reached the semi-final of the 2024 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup
The England national cricket team was placed in Pool B of the competition along with the Australia national cricket team, the Namibia national cricket team, the Scotland national cricket team and the Oman national cricket team.
They began their journey with a poor performance against Scotland, but a failure in the match allowed them to avoid any type of surprise. They then faced Australia and suffered a 36-run drubbing at the hands of the Ashes rivals. The defeat against the Australians put them in trouble and qualification for Super 8 was not completely in their hands.
They needed to sweep Oman and Namibia away in their next two games and hope the Aussies crushed Scotland so they could finish in No. 2 despite having the same amount of points as Scotland due to Net Run Rate.
The English team defeated Oman by 8 wickets with 101 balls remaining and then also thrashed Namibia by 41 runs to strengthen their Net Run Rate. The Australians also helped their Ashes rivals by beating Scotland and England sealed a place in the Super 8.
England began their Super 8 journey by defeating the favourites, West Indies, by 8 wickets, which allowed them to gain a place. However, in the next match they were humiliated when South Africa beat them by 7 runs. After the defeat, England bounced back and crushed the USA by 10 wickets with 62 balls remaining to secure a place in the semi-final. In total, England managed to beat only one Test playing nation, West Indies, on their way to the semi-final.
