India v England: Abhishek gives tourists a shellacking to highlight gulf in class

Brendon McCullum’s first series as white-ball head coach was a humbling experience to say the least, yet another disappointing one for Jos Buttler as captain and a chastening affair for everyone concerned.

Buttler’s pledge going into it to smile a bit more, given a rather downcast air at the best of times, was fine in principle but had the air at the finish of a man grinning strangely on his way to the gallows.

“Do you have any last words, Mr Buttler?”

“Er, yes Mr Executioner, I’d just like to say how much I’ve enjoyed myself these past few days.”

“Really? Right, er, I’ll try and get this over with as quickly as possible...”

India’s chief executioner at the Wankhede Stadium, where Rishi Sunak and the Duke of Edinburgh were on hand to meet the players (if Carlsberg did combos), was Abhishek Sharma, the 24-year-old left-hander from Amritsar.

Abhishek, who played a match-winning hand in the first game in Calcutta, top-scoring with 79, bookended the series in some style, striking 135 from 54 balls with 13 sixes and seven fours as India scored 247-9 after being sent into bat.

It was the highest individual innings for India in the format (beating Shubman Gill’s 126 not out against New Zealand at Ahmedabad in 2023), the most sixes by an Indian in a T20 international, and the second-highest score England have conceded in T20 too (behind 248-6 against Australia at Southampton in 2013).

Jamie Overton, Liam Livingstone, Jofra Archer and Adil Rashid all went for more than 13 runs an over (Overton’s 1-48 from three the most expensive return), with only Brydon Carse (3-38 from four) and Mark Wood (2-32 from four) escaping fierce punishment.

India were 95-1 at the end of the powerplay and 143-2 at halfway, at which point 300 seemed likely.

Wickets fell consistently thereafter, though, Shivam Dube (making perhaps the most miraculous recovery since Lazarus, given all the hoo-hah surrounding his mid-match withdrawal in the last game in Pune owing to concussion) contributing the next highest score of 30 from 13 balls.

Only once has a higher total been chased in T20 internationals, South Africa knocking off 259 to beat West Indies at Centurion in 2023.

Any hopes that history would be made were effectively ended when England lost three wickets in the powerplay, with just Phil Salt’s 55 from 23 balls softening a sorry scorecard in which Jacob Bethell’s 10 was the next best effort.

Mohammed Shami was the most successful bowler with 3-25, Abhishek taking two wickets in a solitary over of left-arm spin.

Abhishek’s innings was a joy to behold, the lithe youngster lighting up Mumbai as he drove, lofted and crashed his way to a century reached from 37 deliveries.

On a day when so many records fell that it was difficult to keep pace, that was very nearly another, but India’s Rohit Sharma and South Africa’s David Miller still share that record for the fastest achieved from 35 balls.

It was not all brute force by any means from Abhishek, who sometimes showed the maker’s name as he played down the ground and who struck the ball cleanly and confidently, and almost exclusively straight or through the offside.

England finally got rid of him with the final ball of the 18th over, the opener slicing Rashid to deep cover.

Salt got the chase off to a good start, clouting 14 from the first three balls sent down by Shami, but a procession of wickets became painful to observe.

It often goes that way in the face of such a large total, but to be bowled out for just 97 in 63 balls was a dismal effort by a team who perhaps surprisingly recalled Wood in place of Saqib Mahmood, who had sent down a triple-wicket maiden first up in Pune, and who rejected the opportunity, with the series already gone, to take a look at someone like spinner Rehan Ahmed.

Only India themselves have inflicted a bigger T20 defeat on a Test-playing nation, New Zealand going down by 168 runs in the game in which Gull set the record for their previous highest innings.

On Thursday, the show moves on to Nagpur, where England play the first of three one-day internationals before the Champions Trophy, hoping that a change in format inspires a change in fortune after what can only be described as a right old shellacking.