India vs England 4th T20I Highlights: IND crash to 9-wicket loss, historic series win for ENG

And England have won the series as well. It is the first time that England have beaten India in a bilateral T20I series consisting of two or more matches. That is the kind of standards India are supposed to uphold. One wouldn't guess considering how India kept their field back when England needed one to win and allowed them to take the single. To lose matches is one thing, but this is something else. Fans of a certain age would remember the desolation they may have felt during India's Test tours of England in 2011 and 2014. This is quite similar to that. At no point today did India look like they were in the game at all, let alone having a chance at winning the match. T20 is supposed to be the format that players play the most today. India's Test defeats have been attributed to younger batsmen losing their instincts for red-ball cricket in the wake of T20s after the retirement for the senior players. Well, this was a T20 series. How do you explain this away?

Just poetic irony that every over is followed by Sony's chest-thumping advertisement of this series, indicating that the Indian players will be flying throughout the rubber. Meanwhile, here on earth, Brook and Salt are looking like they are playing an amateur side here. They cream 11 runs out of the 11th over by Arshdeep, one of the better ones for India.

Salt is on 47 off 33, Brook on 64 off 27.

England 131/1 in 11 overs

Axar Patel comes in for the ninth over, Brook takes a single first ball. Axar obliges Salt with a slot delivery third ball, Salt smashes it over the ropes for a six. A single next ball and then Brook plays the fifth ball to extra cover. Abhishek Sharma just flops to the ground and palms the ball to the boundary. Another poor ball on the stumps, this time Brook smashes it down the ground for a six. India's batting, bowling and fielding standards are all in the pits here. Perhaps they should just avoid playing outside India, or international cricket at all considering how good they all look in the IPL.

Brook is on 50 off 21, Salt is on 37 off 27.

England 105/1 in 9 overs

Prasidh with another no ball fifth ball of the fifth over and this time, Salt manages to get the free-hit delivery to the boundary for four, as he does for the next ball as well. Prince then concedes 10 off the sixth over, with Brook going for another audacious scoop and nailing it off the fifth ball for four.

Brook on 18 off 19, Salt on 26 off 20.

England 62/1 in 6 overs

Harry Brook fends off a back of a length delivery first up from Arshdeep before going all the away across to the off side, getting down on a knee and scooping the next ball over deep fine leg for six. He gets into the scoop position again, Arshdeep goes shorter but it is too far wide outside off. He reloads the sixth delivery, Brook drives to deep point for two runs here.

He is on eight off three balls, Phil Salt at the other end, extraordinarily on no runs after seven balls.

England 22/1 in 3 overs

Well, not too many gains for England on the scoreboard in the first two overs, as was the case for India. Arshdeep, in fact, started out with a maiden, although there were four byes that came off the third ball. That was thanks to some poor wicketkeeping by Ishan Kishan. Then just three runs off the second by Prasidh Krishna. Both pacers found the batters pads on multiple occassions.

Four runs and two wickets in the last over. Eight runs and two wickets in the last two overs. Iyer got India some momentum in the 18th over but Archer and Curran have sucked it right out of them. Archer got Sundar caught at long leg off the third ball. And then Iyer tries to run a single off the last ball, Archer gets into the football fever by cleanly side-footing the ball to the stumps at the striker's end. Axar Patel run out.

He had called his team's performance "attrocious" after the last match. Now he is showing them what he expects them to do. Adil Rashid at the receiving end. Iyer takes two runs off the first ball and then a couple of singles after that. Then Iyer smashes the fourth ball over long off for a six. The Indian captain then dabs the fifth ball fine past short third for four and the last ball is sent down the ground again for another six.

Iyer is on 77 off 45, Washington Sundar on one off two.

India 150/5 in 18 overs

He gets there in 33 balls and with a six. Iyer starts the 15th over by Rashid over cover between deep point and long off. Two singles off the next three balls and then a six behind square by Iyer to get past 50. A single last ball, Iyer is on 52 off 34. Tilak Varma on three off three.

India 116/4 in 15 overs

...but it has come in a whopping 41 balls. Dube has faced 21 deliveries thus far and hasn't been able to hit a six. In fact, he hasn't really tried to hit a six. The Indians have hunkered down but the question needs to be asked, what is the use of doing that.

Iyer and Dube have decided to tread lightly here. Tongue returns for the 10th over, Dube ends up chopping the third ball right in front of the stumps. It bounces right in front of him and somehow goes all the way past the covers for four.

And this time, it's not even a short ball from a pacer! Lenght ball on the shorter side, Abhishek heaves across the line, as Sooryavanshi and Kishan did before him. The ball goes high up in the air, Rashid runs to catch it himself.

India's batsmen don't seem to have done any sort of homework coming into this tour, thinking what they did in the IPL is all they need to smash England out of the park. Well, one side is being sent out of the park on this tour and it is not England.

Abhishek Sharma c & b Rashid 16 (14)

India 48/3 in 6.4 overs

Ishan Kishan with an ugly swipe across the line and he falls to Tongue, who only had a change of ends. Abhishek had looked rather unsure flicking the first ball in the air but it fell at deep square leg where there was no fielder, a single taken. Then Tongue with a short ball, Kishan throws the kitchen sink at it but this isn't a tiny IPL ground. You mishit it, it will fall into the hands of a fielder and not a member of the crowd. And well, this particular shot would've been caught in the IPL as well as the ball went up but nowhere else, caught at short third.

Kishan c Curran b Tongue 4 (6)

India 37/2 in 4.2 overs

Like clockwork. Archer gets Sooryavanshi again. No room given at all, Sooryavanshi goes for a wild pull anyway and is caught. Well, Sooryavanshi did look assured against Tongue but it doesn't look like he knows what he can do against Archer. He had sent the second ball high in the air with a big pull, that landed in no-man's land and the batters ran two. Archer follows it up with a low full toss, Sooryavanshi mistimes the drive to midwicket. Then Archer goes back of a length outside off, climbs on Sooryavanshi and cramps him for room. The teenager goes for the shot that he seems to instinctively go for, caught at mid-on. Scores of 14, 13 and 15 so far for Sooryavanshi in international cricket.

Sooryavanshi c Curran b Archer 15 (10)

India 23/1 in 2.4 overs

Archer bowls the 2nd ball short as well, into Sooryavanshi's ribs and the Indian opener's swish is mistimed to square leg. Single taken. Archer stays short for Abhishek, no runs there. Then Abhishek takes a single. Archer with another short one, Sooryavanshi seemed to be moving leg side initially but then pulls to deep midwicket. No timing whatsoever, Rashid collects the ball and the batters run two. Sooryavanshi mistimes the next ball to midwicket, then attempts a drive and misses.

Abhishek Sharma is on his knees by the boundary, juggling a ball on his bat. Sooryavanshi is sat in the Indian dugout. Both players completely kitted up. The County Ground is bathed in bright sunshine.

These were Shreyas Iyer's thoughts at the toss: "We saw the fearlessness which we've been carrying for the first two games. It's just that we are not able to execute the plans as much as possible, but today, it's a fresh day, fresh start, and the boys are in pretty high spirits. (Last game is history. Have to start afresh today?) Absolutely, but when you say positive, you have to read the environment and have that sort of awareness about how the game is going. You need to adapt as quickly as possible to the wicket and where the wind is blowing. So, all these things, tactically, you've got to be up to your mark. And I think if these things are sorted, definitely you get the results. (And what do you make of the surface?) It looks good. It has got a decent amount of grass over the wicket. So, definitely we'll have a look how it plays from the first ball. (And any changes in your side now that you're batting first?) We've got two changes, two injuries actually. Varun and Harshit go out, so Washington and Prasidh comes in."

This is what the BCCI has said about why the pacer and the spinner are not in the playing eleven today: "Harshit Rana and Varun Chakaravarthy sustained hamstring injuries in the third T20I against England at Trent Bridge. The BCCI Medical Team has assessed them and ruled them out of the 4th and 5th T20Is."

Abhishek Sharma, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Ishan Kishan(w), Shreyas Iyer(c), Tilak Varma, Shivam Dube, Washington Sundar, Axar Patel, Prince Yadav, Arshdeep Singh, Prasidh Krishna

All right, Shreyas Iyer and Harry Brook have walked out with their team sheets. There is a nice crowd slowly filling up the stadium here. Ravi Shastri at the ready to conduct the toss. Richie Richardson is the match referee. HERE WE GO!

Sanju Samson had to make way for Vaibhav Sooryavanshi in the second T20I, which didn't send too many shockwaves around the world of Indian cricket due to the former's form, and the anticipation around the latter. But the stunned reactions came when Samson was not there in the squad for India's upcoming tour of Zimbabwe. Now it turned out that Samson hadn't, in fact, been dropped from that series. Head coach Gautam Gambhir fielded questions from the press after India's record loss in the third T20I and this is what he had to say about the wicketkeeper-batsman.

"The first thing is that regarding the clarity Sanju Samson needed, he has been given that from my side. That’s a conversation strictly between the player and the head coach. That conversation is not going to come outside. Regarding Sanju, we are very clear what he has done for India has been phenomenal and sometimes you just have to look at the form of a certain player. There is no hard and fast rule that he cannot make a comeback in this series.”

This was the question that arose after Jofra Archer's opinion on how England's pacers have been helped by the fact that many of them were getting belted to all parts of the field in the IPL not too long ago. Archer said that bowling in England felt like a return to "normal" cricket. "You try to bowl the ball straight on a good length. Whereas over there, because the wickets are so easy and the boundaries are so small, you have to be really, really particular. Here, I feel your margin for error is a little bit bigger."

If Archer felt that the experience of bowling in tougher conditions for him in the IPL helped him, the converse could also be true for the Indian batsmen, who were hitting sixes for fun this year but looked completely at sea in England and in Ireland before that.

Shreyas Iyer is yet to win a single match as India captain. Now, he has only captained in five games, but that is also India's longest streak in T20Is without a win. But take into account his time in the IPL this year and you will see that Iyer has now lost 10 of his last 12 T20 matches as captain.

Abhishek Sharma, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Ishan Kishan(w), Shreyas Iyer(c), Tilak Varma, Shivam Dube, Axar Patel, Harshit Rana, Prince Yadav, Arshdeep Singh, Varun Chakaravarthy, Sanju Samson, Prasidh Krishna, Washington Sundar, Ravi Bishnoi, Suryansh Shedge