It was India’s chance for a redemption after getting white-washed in the Test series against England. In the end, they put up a good fight, but still fell short of victory. They were clearly 15-20 runs short in the first innings, and the following win probability graph says it all:
The win probability of India peaked at 1 in the 12th over, when Rane and Dravid were cruising along. A hattrick of sixes by Dravid put India in a strong position. Then suddenly everything unraveled from there. A succession of 4 quick wickets brought the win probability below the 0.75 mark. Raina’s cameo threatened to take India to a score in the 170-180 range, but then a second mini-collapse meant that India fell well short of the target. In the end, this turned out to be the decisive point of the game.
England were always steady in the chase of the target, and even though the things did get interesting in the end, they were never really in a danger. The lowest their win probability went to was around 0.60 towards the end of the game, but Samit Patel (who accumulated 0.544 batting WPA) knocked in the winning runs with a trio of fours.
The one-day series begins on Saturday, and India will be hoping to finally squeeze out a victory on this horrendous tour. Do check out the live scoreboard on Saturday, we will be doing live win probability updates for the one-day series as well.