A disappointed England captain Eoin Morgan has labelled the team's batting performance as their worst in a "couple of years" after the visitors witnessed a dramatic collapse to not only lose the third and final T20 International against India but also the series.
Needing 203 to win the match, and the series, England were were right on course at 119 for the loss of two wickets in the 14th over before losing eight wickets in a span of eight runs to be bowled out for 127 midway through the 17th over.
Young leg-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal was the architect of India's win by returning with third best figures in T20 cricket with stats of six for 25, the best by an Indian.
"It was very disappointing. For maybe 60 per cent of the game we were competitive and right in amongst it, but fell away terribly towards the end. We committed a cardinal sin of losing two inform players in one over and allowed India to build a little bit of pressure and we weren't up to it at all," Morgan said at the post-match press conference last night after losing th series-deciding third T20 International by 75 runs at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium here.
Comfortably batting at 40 off 21 balls, Morgan was the first of those two wickets to go down and then another set batsman Joe Root (42 from 37 balls) followed in the next delivery from Chahal.
Morgan said bating has been England's strong point for quite some time now but feels in this series the bowlers have outperformed the batsmen.
"No, I can't (put a finger on why the collapse happened). We haven't produced a batting performance as bad as that in a couple of years. We pride ourselves on our batting, it has been our strong point for a long time but in this series our bowlers have outperformed our batsmen," he said.
"I thought we (me and Root) were going quite well. Majority of the runs at this ground are always scored in the last 10 overs. I think we needed 110 off the last 10 with eight wickets in hands. A better performance from either me or Joe - a 70 or 80 from me or him could have made a huge difference," he added.
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"(But) Hat's off to India, they really played well and put in performances worthy of winning the series," Morgan said.
Morgan said it was disappointing they could not rotate the strike quite often to tackle the pressure of an ever
"The one thing you do want to do is rotate the strike. It actually gets your eye in, you get to watch the ball from both ends. It's disappointing that we didn't do that. It might have taken a bit of smarter cricket to wrestle back momentum," the English skipper said.
Talking about the limited overs rubber against India, Morgan said losing the ODI series was more painful than the T20 series.
"In the ODIs, it was only about 15-20 runs between winning and losing the series. Probably that hurts us more than losing this (T200 series," he said.
"Looking at the performances in the ODIs, we were potentially worth of winning the series. In the T20 series, probably the last game hurt us more. The game got away from us, we should have won. Today we underperformed and we weren't good enough," Morgan added.
