AHMEDABAD: After suffering a massive defeat in the second T20I against India here on Sunday, England skipper Eoin Morgan said their opponents came “all guns blazing” in the match and played really well.
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India captain Virat Kohli led from the front while Ishan Kishan scored a magnificent half-century on debut as the hosts registered a seven-wicket win.
The victory helped the hosts level the five-match series 1-1. Kohli played an unbeaten knock of 73 runs while Kishan scored 56, helping the team chase down a target of 165 runs.

“With the bat, I do not think (we were) that far and I think India played really well. And on top of that, they came (out) with all guns blazing and managed to get away from us in the period where we did not manage to do that. So, that put our bowlers a little bit under more pressure,” Morgan said during the post-match press conference.
Kohli’s knock also made him the first batsman to score 3,000 runs in T20Is. The skipper was just 72 runs behind the milestone before the match. He now has 3,001 runs from 87 T20Is.
England had won the first T20I quite convincingly but this wicket, according to Morgan, was different from the one dished out in the first game.

“We were probably in and around par at the halfway stage (England were 91/2 after 11 overs), but India bowled well. This was a different pitch to the one for the first game, less pace in it. They put us on the back-foot from the start and we didn’t have a counter to that, which was disappointing,” said Morgan.
“Pace off the ball is always challenging for the batsmen. I was a little disappointed with the way we played.”
As the ICC T20 World Cup is scheduled to be played in India later this year, the ongoing five-match series will serve as great preparation for both the teams.

Reflecting on the same, Morgan said the series will allow them to be “best prepared” for the World Cup.
“To become better in these conditions, you are going to do that by playing and making mistakes. You tend to learn quickly if you are winning, you are confident and everything runs smoothly. But equally, if we have to learn the hard ways, we are still going through that process of trying to learn game on game,” Morgan said.
“So when it comes to the (T20) World Cup in seven months’ time, we can be as best prepared and know more about ourselves and where we need to get better,” he said.