Yesterday was a very tough day in England camp, as the ‘Three Lion’   faced 10 wickets defeat by visitors ‘Men in Blue’ in the opening One-day International at The Kennington Oval.

After winning the toss, India decided to field first on a swing-friendly pitch. A decision that turned out satisfactory as the host only managed to post 110 runs with the loss of 10 wickets in 25.2 overs.

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The visitors successfully just chased in 18.4 overs and 10 wickets in hand.

Pacer Jasprit Bumrah ends with his career-best figure of 6 for 19 in 7.2 overs on England soil, and Captain Rohit Sharma scored 76 runs.

It was England’s lowest total against India in ODI.

Jos Buttler’s maximum of 30 was the individual highest from the England side. Buttler was recently appointed as England’s new white-ball captain, after England’s long-serving captain and 2019 world-cup winning leader. Eoin Morgan called time on his international career last month.

In the post-match interview, Buttler said, “batting has been his team’s biggest strength, and with big guns such as Ben Stokes and Joe Root returning to the side following the side’s triumph in the rescheduled fifth Test against India at Edgbaston recently, it was a matter of time before the group starts to click.”

He further added “If you look at the names of the guys in there, they are some of the best players we’ve had,” said Buttler. “Over the last five or six years, the batting has been our super strength, so there’s certainly no need to panic,” the captain was quoted as saying in Daily Mail.

 “When you have had a lot of success over such a long period of time, it’s always going to be tough trying to continue that and evolve that. Pressure and expectation are always going to be there. That is the standard we have set ourselves over a long period of time and we deserve that expectation. This doesn’t change the fact we are a good team. We were challenged today, and we’ve come up very short, but there is a lot of confidence that we can come back strongly.”

However, both the legends of test cricket, Root and Stokes dismissed cheaply for a duck, and England’s blistering batsman Liam Livingstone too unable to open his account.

Buttler said it is their new brand of cricket, but if the approach is not producing the expected results, as a whole unit they will look at what’s going wrong and will try not to lose wickets at the start of the innings “But we must look at it and think, is there a way we can try and manage it better, try and not lose as many wickets at the start? And we’ve got to learn quickly.”

 Following England’s 2-1 loss in the T20 series, the ODI series starting on a disastrous note, though, certainly rattled Buttler who added it was a “tough loss to take”.

 “It was a disappointing day, and a tough loss to take. There was a little bit in the wicket early on, and Bumrah bowled fantastically well, but we didn’t deal with it as well as we’d like.”

(with inputs from IANS)