Different Team, Different Result: India Win the 1st ODI at Edgbaston — But the Questions Remain

 

Three weeks. That is all the time that separated the most embarrassing chapter of India's white-ball cricket in recent memory — 76 all out at Trent Bridge, their heaviest T20I defeat ever — from the most composed ODI performance they have produced in England in years. Same country. Completely different team. Completely different result. India won the first ODI at Edgbaston, Birmingham by six wickets with 28 balls to spare, chasing down 259 thanks to a captain's innings of 80 from Shubman Gill and an extraordinary all-round performance from Axar Patel — 4 for 62 with the ball, 57 not out with the bat — to take a 1-0 series lead. England, dismissed for 258 in the 48th over at one of their supposed fortress grounds, were poor with the bat and had no answer to a bowling attack that finally looked like what India's bowling is supposed to look like.

The story of this match cannot be told without telling the story of the transformation — because the difference between the team that lost the T20I series 4-0 and the team that walked off Edgbaston as winners yesterday is not just tactical. It is personnel. It is philosophy. And it is a question that Indian cricket needs to answer honestly about how it manages its resources heading towards the ODI World Cup in South Africa in 15 months' time.

Match Highlights

Watch the full highlights — Bumrah's early strikes, Gill's captain's innings, and the Axar-Washington finish that sealed it:

The Transformation: What Changed Between T20Is and ODIs

Let us be direct about what is different. The T20I squad that lost 4-0 did not contain Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, or Jasprit Bumrah. The ODI squad does. Those three names are, between them, responsible for more than 35,000 international runs and 700-plus wickets. Removing them from any cricket team in the world and replacing them with second-choice players changes the team's quality fundamentally — and then bringing them back and expecting the results to be different is not a revelation. It is arithmetic.

This is not a criticism of the T20I squad, many of whom performed as well as could reasonably be expected. It is a criticism of the framing that has surrounded India's England tour — a framing that has treated the T20I defeats as evidence of a structural problem in Indian cricket when they were, in significant part, the predictable consequence of selecting a second-string team and sending them to English conditions in July without their best fast bowler, best batter, and most experienced captain.

The IPL pipeline question is real, and we have covered it across this series — the reliance on IPL form as a predictor of international performance in English conditions was exposed repeatedly in the T20I matches. But that critique applies specifically to format and conditions. In ODI cricket, with a deeper batting order, more overs to work with, and the specific skills of Bumrah and Axar Patel available, India are a structurally stronger side. Yesterday proved it.

England's Innings: Root and Dawson Save the Blushes

England elected to bat at Edgbaston — a ground where they had won seven consecutive ODIs stretching back to 2015. The decision was reasonable given their recent T20I dominance and the conditions. What followed was not.

Gurnoor Brar — the Punjab seamer who was one of the more interesting selections in India's ODI squad — removed both openers in the 13th over in the space of three deliveries. Ben Duckett had made 45 from the top of the order, playing with the kind of freedom that defines his batting, before Brar angled one in to trap him. Jacob Bethell, opening for the first time in ODIs under the new Edgbaston arrangement, contributed 14 before edging behind. England were 64 for 2 in the 13th over, which became 107 for 6 by the 22nd — a collapse of four wickets for 43 runs that included Harry Brook, Jos Buttler, and Sam Curran all departing cheaply. Bumrah's opening spell of eight overs for 8 runs set the tone immediately — this was a Bumrah who had been rested for the entire T20I series and arrived at Edgbaston fresh, motivated, and operating at his most dangerous. The swing was there from ball one, the slower balls were impossible to pick, and England's top order — which had dominated the T20I series — simply had no answer for him.

What saved England from total embarrassment was a partnership the match report will remember even if the scoreline downplays it. Joe Root — batting at three, carrying England's ODI batting for the better part of two years now — made 76 not out from 87 balls. Liam Dawson, the Hampshire left-armer who bats at seven or eight and has never previously suggested he could save an ODI innings, made 68 from 77 balls in a partnership of 121 that took England from 107 for 6 to 228 for 7. Dawson's innings — which included three sixes and eight fours, and which produced the highest ODI score of his career by some distance — was one of those performances that you cannot plan for and cannot rely on. England did not post a competitive score. They posted a score that was, as Cricinfo noted, "subpar" — and they had Root and Dawson's unexpected partnership to thank that it was not significantly worse.

Axar Patel finished with 4 for 62, which does not fully capture how important his bowling was. His dismissal of Dawson — caught at deep backward square leg attempting a pull off a shortish ball — broke the partnership at exactly the moment England needed it to continue. His removal of Archer for 12 and then Rashid and Tongue in the same over sealed the innings at 258 — a total that, on a flat Edgbaston surface in July, was always going to be insufficient.

India's Chase: Gill, the Collapse, and the Axar-Washington Rescue

India's chase began with a statement. Jofra Archer — fresh from his extraordinary T20I series in which he dismissed Vaibhav Sooryavanshi twice and consistently bowled above 145kph — was handed the ball to open the bowling in the ODI context. His first over to Rohit Sharma produced an edge that bisected the slips for four. His third delivery to Virat Kohli — an inswinging yorker at 148kph that struck Kohli on the shin as he stepped across his stumps — produced an lbw appeal that was upheld. Kohli for 5. The biggest ovation of the day at Edgbaston was for a dismissed batter. Kohli's return to international cricket, after his sabbatical period, had lasted three balls.

That Kohli dismissal — and Sam Curran's removal of Rohit Sharma for 16 in the next over, spooning a heave to Brook at mid-off — put India at 48 for 2 and gave England a momentum shift they desperately needed. Shubman Gill and Shreyas Iyer used it to build an innings of exactly the kind the T20I squad could never quite manage: composed, patient through the new ball, and then increasingly assertive as the bowling weakened. Their partnership of 101 runs was the platform the chase required. When Gill — approaching what looked like a certain fifty and possibly a century — had to retire hurt with cramps at 80 not out, the match shifted sharply.

India's middle order immediately unravelled. Iyer was run out by a direct hit from Harry Brook — a brilliant piece of fielding from a man who has had an outstanding England tour in all departments — for 35. KL Rahul followed five balls later, playing on to Tongue's first ODI wicket. In the space of 15 balls, India had lost three wickets for 11 runs and gone from 160 for 1 to 160 for 4. England, needing something from the final third of the match, had found it at the worst possible time for India.

What happened next was the defining passage of the match. Axar Patel arrived at 160 for 4 and Washington Sundar shortly after. The two allrounders — neither of whom is primarily a batter, both of whom have been India's most reliable lower-order contributors in white-ball cricket for the last two years — added an unbroken partnership of 102 from 105 balls that was so controlled, so unhurried, and so comfortable that Gill was able to watch it from the dressing room with his feet elevated and his cramp under ice. Axar reached his fifty from 39 balls — four sixes, including a slog-sweep off Jacks that nearly ended with a spectator wearing the ball — and Washington sealed his maiden ODI fifty with a six off Rashid that also completed the partnership century and the match. India won with 28 balls remaining. England's seventh consecutive ODI win at Edgbaston came to an end.

The Tanqeed: What England Must Examine

England's defeat at Edgbaston was not unexpected — Bumrah's return alone changes the equation significantly — but the manner of it reveals problems that the T20I series success may have temporarily obscured.

The top-order batting in ODI cricket has been a concern for some time. England have lost five of seven bilateral ODI series since 2024. Their Champions Trophy campaign earlier this year produced no wins. The aggressive, high-tempo approach that defines their T20I cricket — and that produced four dominant wins against a weakened India — does not always translate into the 50-over format, where the middle overs require a different kind of accumulation and the ability to build a partnership from a position of relative difficulty. When Brook, Buttler, and Curran all depart cheaply in the same ten-over stretch, as they did yesterday, England's tail is exposed immediately. Root and Dawson showed what lower-order resilience can produce — but relying on a number eight for a match-saving fifty is not a plan.

The bowling without Archer on full throttle is also a question. Dawson's 121-run partnership with Root was built largely against Curran, Jacks, and Rashid — the second and third tier of England's attack. None of them found the answer to Root's off-side game or Dawson's more limited but surprisingly effective pulling. In ODI cricket, where conditions are flat and the ball gets old, England need either their pace bowlers to take wickets in the powerplay or their spinners to constrict in the middle overs. Yesterday, neither happened consistently enough.

The Tanqeed: What India Must Not Forget

India's win was convincing. The performance was professional and largely well-executed. But two things need to be said honestly.

First: this result does not retroactively explain away the T20I series. The 4-0 defeat happened because India sent a genuinely second-string squad to England in a format that requires specific skills on specific pitches — and that squad, without Bumrah and without the top-order experience of Rohit and Kohli, was insufficient for English conditions. Bumrah's return for the ODIs changes the bowling attack's quality entirely. That is not a vindication of the T20I selection philosophy. If anything, it is an argument that India's squad management needs to think more carefully about which players it rests and when, particularly heading into a World Cup cycle.

Second: the middle-order collapse — three wickets for 11 runs after Gill retired hurt — was exactly the kind of fragility that Indian cricket has shown in away ODI series over the last two years. They lost in Sri Lanka, in Australia, and at home to New Zealand because their middle order, without the protection of a settled captain or senior batter, can unravel quickly. Yesterday, Axar and Washington bailed them out. In a World Cup quarter-final, the margin for error is different. The middle-order question needs a more permanent answer than hoping for another Axar-Washington stand.

As we covered across the T20I series — including our full analysis of the Trent Bridge collapse and the Archer-Sooryavanshi battle at Bristol — India's England tour has been a story of two squads producing two very different results. The T20I squad showed the limits of India's depth. The ODI squad, yesterday, showed what India's first-choice team looks like when it functions. The gap between those two things is the conversation Indian cricket needs to have before South Africa 2027.

Do you think India's ODI win changes the narrative of their England tour — or does the T20I series 4-0 defeat still tell the more important story? And with Kohli back for 5 balls before Archer dismissed him, are there questions about his form at the top of the order? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.