- Test team coach McCullum was also appointed white-ball coach last year.
- The tour of India is the first and it started with a defeat, India won by seven wickets.
- England made just 132 with the bat and India chased it down in 13 overs.
Jos Buttler has promised a counter-attacking response from England after his fresh start under all-round coach Brendon McCullum collapsed yesterday due to India's heavy diet of spin.
Reigning world champions India reveled in their home conditions and took a 1-0 lead in the Twenty20 series after winning the toss under the Eden Gardens floodlights.
This time last year, Yashasvi Jaiswal flayed England's attack as his own front six struggled to combat the spin ball, but with India's Test stars rested for this five-match campaign, it was up to another left-hander to inflict such punishment in the form of Abhishek Sharma after the tourists reeled to 132 all out.
Sharma hit eight sixes in a rampage that took him to 79 off 34 deliveries, falling shortly before a seven-wicket win was confirmed off 43 balls not taken.
“In the end we were defeated. “We simply couldn't impose the game we wanted to play, but if anything we will be more aggressive and react stronger in the next one,” Buttler said.
“We will be better until the end and it is good to enter the series even though it is a defeat.” It's about trying to impose on the opponent the game we want to play.”
England's T20 team was thrashed by India in its first match under new head coach Brendon McCullum on Wednesday.
England came into bat and posted just 132, with India chasing the total within 13 overs.
McCullum (left) took over the role and added it to his job as head coach of the Test team.
Captain Jos Buttler was the top scorer with 68, but his team has work to do to bounce back.
England arrived in the subcontinent promising to be “watchable” under McCullum and Buttler, but their problems in facing high-quality spin, witnessed during 4-1 and 2-1 Test series defeats to India and Pakistan respectively in 2024, resurfaced in a true horror show.
Among them, player of the match Varun Chakravarthy, Axar Patel and Ravi Bishnoi combined for figures of 12-1-67-5 to embarrass opponents for whom only Buttler, who hit a 44-ball 68, suited up.
At the other end, his teammates mustered a pitiful 53 runs from the equivalent of 12.4 overs when Chakravarthy sucked the life out of the innings by dismissing Harry Brook and Liam Livingstone with googlies in the eighth over.
Failure to recover from 65 for four meant England's only hope of victory was to take early wickets and Buttler made good on his pre-series promise to post original wickets, donning his helmet at short leg for Jofra Archer's opener.
Archer struck twice in an excellent new-ball spell, temporarily silencing a home crowd approaching 68,000 in the process, but Sharma, one of several new poster boys in Indian cricket, used his luck to return the noise, hitting a half-century. in just 20 balls.
Mark Wood, back after four months out with an elbow injury, recorded speeds of up to 96 miles per hour, but the left-handed Sharma simply changed his pace against him, moving and guiding successive sixes behind the wicket to quell any feeling of an England counterattack.
Two chances offered by Sharma were wasted, and India were two boundaries away from achieving 15 wins in 18 matches under the captaincy of Suryakumar Yadav when they succumbed to a third, meaning England head to Chennai on Saturday, requiring a change of course to meet Buttler's objective. promise.