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England captain Harry Brook praised the game awareness and tactical approach shown by centurion Jacob Bethell during England's run chase against India in the ICC Men's T20 World Cup semi-final, highlighting how the young batter targeted favourable "match-ups" in spinners.
Bethell produced a fearless innings that kept England in the hunt while chasing a monstrous target of 254 set by the defending champions at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. Bethell, who smashed 105, couldn't help his side to cross the finish line as the Three Lions suffered a thrilling seven-run loss. Speaking during the post-match press conference, England skipper Brook said the left-handed batter Bethell showed sharp cricketing intelligence in reading the bowlers and identifying scoring opportunities, particularly against mystery spinner Varun Chakaravarthy. "Yeah, it's funny, because every time we get asked about spinners, you're usually slagging us off. So it's nice to have a compliment about it for once. But yeah, we identified that Chakaravarthy's miss is probably short, and Bethell put him away early on. And as every bowler does, he tried to go a bit fuller, and he hit him for six back over his head," Brook said. The England skipper added that Bethell's ability to quickly assess conditions and bowlers' plans helped him maintain pressure on the Indian attack during the chase. "And I think it's just the cricket smarts and just trying to figure out what their bowling attack is trying to do and the match-ups as well. So if you're facing a left-arm spinner as a left-handed batter, that's your match-up, you've got to try and take that over big," he added. Earlier, put to bat first by England, a fiery knock from Sanju Samson (89* in 42 balls, with eight fours and seven sixes) and cameos from Shivam Dube (43 in 25 balls, with a four and four sixes), Ishan Kishan (39 in 18 balls, with four boundaries), Hardik Pandya (27 in 12 balls, with three fours and two sixes) and Tilak Varma (21 in seven balls, with three sixes) took India to 253/7 in 20 overs. Despite having England down at 95/4, India could not dominate them as Jacob Bethell (105 in 48 balls, with eight fours and seven sixes) and Will Jacks (35 in 20 balls, with four boundaries and two sixes) put a counter-attacking 77-run stand for the fifth wicket. Bethell continued to march on even after Jacks' dismissal and a fiery four-ball cameo of 19 from Jofra Archer took England really close, but not to the finishing line, ending at 246/7. (ANI)
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