India vs England 5th T20I LIVE SCORE: SKY, Samson’s form in focus as IND look to hammer home superiority

India vs England 5th T20I LIVE SCORE: Largely placid tracks with some fairly good bounce for the seamers, that is what one normally gets to see at the Wankhede Stadium. Eight T20Is have been played here thus far, of which three was as a neutral venue during the 2016 T20 World Cup. India have hosted five T20Is and won four of them. The only team to beat them? England, on December 22, 2012.

India vs England 5th T20I LIVE SCORE: Sanjay Manjrekar has said that players as mercurial as Sanju Samson should be allowed to have a lot of failures as when they do strike, they take the game away from the opposition. “And you see with Sanju Samson, when he plays well, he gets an incredible hundred and puts your team in a winning position. So, such people are allowed failures and maybe a long patch of failures as well because that is the nature of these as a T20 cricketer, where you cannot play yourself, where you have to keep taking those risks that they take, and hopefully there is one innings that just propels him back into form,” said Manjrekar on ESPNCricinfo.

“So, with Samson, I think you should just make sure that he gets as many innings as possible purely because when he gets into form and plays well, he makes it all worth it. If that was another guy who was failing in this fashion and when he got into form just got you 40 or 50, then maybe you would offer him a shorter rope. But I will have a lot of patience with this current version of Sanju Samson,” he added.

India vs England 5th T20I LIVE SCORE: Sanju Samson and Suryakumar Yadav were sharing a behemoth of a partnership and destroying the Bangladesh bowling attack not too long ago. However, that has ended up being the last time SKY scored more than 50 runs in an innings. Samson went on to score two more centuries in the next four innings but in this series, he has scores of 26, 5, 3 and 1.

India vs England 5th T20I LIVE SCORE: Shami played just one match in this series and there were a lot of raised eyebrows when he was not selected in the first T20I. However, it was all part of the plan. The priority was to get Shami warming up before matches and work closely with the team physios in the nets.

India vs England 5th T20I LIVE SCORE: Morne Morkel was all praise for how Mohammed Shami is shaping up in this series. “Shami has been bowling really well. You know, catching to him at warm-ups, (the ball) is really hitting the glove hard. So, (we’re) very happy with how he’s coming along. You know, he’s probably going to get an opportunity in the next game. We’ll see how things go. But, yeah, (we’re) excited to have him back in the group,” Morkel said.

India vs England 5th T20I LIVE SCORE: Mohammed Shami got one match in this series and there is a chance that the Indian management could want him to get one more before the run of ODI matches. The obvious option seems to be to keep Arshdeep Singh out again but India might also consider getting an extra seamer considering the conditions at the Wankhede. It will be interesting to see which spinner makes way in that case.

India vs England 5th T20I LIVE SCORE: Considering the way that match went, Saqib Mahmood’s unbelievable first over of this tour might seem like a distant memory for England. But regardless of the result, that certainly was a moment rarely seen in a T20 match – a triple wicket maiden. It started with Sanju Samson’s wicket and that was followed by Tilak Varma going the very next ball. Suryakumar Yadav managed to keep Mahmood from getting a hat-trick but he couldn only survive three more deliveries. India were thus 12/3 at the end of the second over and they went and won a cricket match from that position.

India vs England 5th T20I LIVE SCORE: Brendon McCullum had made it clear that the England team management has moved beyond the stage of managing Jofra Archer’s workload, signalling a possible retunr to full fitness at long last for the pace spearhead. Despite this, there is a good chance that he could be rested today as he has bowled all 16 of his available overs thus far in this series.

India vs England 5th T20I LIVE SCORE: Former England captain Kevin Pietersen was not happy at all with Rana being brought on as a concussion sub for Dube. He stated that match referee Javagal Srinath should accept his mistake in allowing this to happen. “Concussion sub is quite the topic everywhere here atm and my view is…it was NEVER a like for like replacement and the match referee should just hold his hand up and say he got that one wrong. End of event for good and we move on to another great clash this evening,” he tweeted.

India vs England 5th T20I LIVE SCORE: How about this for a stat from ESPNCricinfo. India’s captains across men’s formats this season – Rohit Sharma and Suryakumar Yadav – average a combined 13.12, the lowest for any team with a minimum of 20 innings batting in the top seven.

India vs England 5th T20I LIVE SCORE: It is comparatively cooler in Mumbai at the moment, which means that you sweat less. Dew is expected to play a role. In the recent Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, teams chasing won eight times in 14 matches. The average score in the competition at the venue was 145. However, teams batting first have won only three T20Is out of the eight at this venue.

India vs England 5th T20I LIVE SCORE: Murali Kartik, as expected, chose not to ask Suryakumar Yadav or Jos Buttler about the concussion substitute, as expected, and so we never got to know the Indian captain’s thoughts on the matter. But Buttler spoke about it in the post-match press-conference. “It is not a like-for-like replacement. We don’t agree with that,” Buttler said after India completed a 15-run win. “Either Shivam Dube has put on about 25mph with the ball or Harshit has really improved his batting. It’s part of the game and we really should have gone on to win the match, but we disagree with the decision.”

India vs England 5th T20I LIVE SCORE: If you think that criticising India or the officials, especially the latter, over the concussion substitute fiasco means you are not supporting India, then think again. There can probably be no bigger supporter of India than the legendary Ravichandran Ashwin and even he had to call this one out. “The game is done. India capture yet another series at home. T20I has been a real juggernaut of a win. What was this game? It was like a replica of the IPL. Supersub was there, and the game was played with an impact player,” Ashwin said on his YouTube channel ‘Ash Ki Baat’.

“The entire discussion is about how Harshit Rana came in as a concussion substitute for Shivam Dube. Did we forget that it was an international match and play an IPL match? I can understand. It has happened in the past. Ravindra Jadeja got concussed in Canberra, and Yuzvendra Chahal came in as a substitute. I don’t understand this. At least previously, Chahal came in for Jadeja, a spinner for a spinner,” he added.

India vs England 5th T20I LIVE SCORE: Amid all the hubbub over Harshit Rana being brought on as a concussion substitute for Shivam Dube it may have gone somewhat unnoticed that the latter did suffer a concussion. There has been no messages from the Indian camp over his availability. In case he can’t play, we could see Ramandeep Singh taking his place. Unless SKY and Gambhir and the rest still think that Rana is a clone of Dube.

India vs England 5th T20I LIVE SCORE: Philip Salt(w), Ben Duckett, Jos Buttler(c), Harry Brook, Liam Livingstone, Jacob Bethell, Brydon Carse, Jamie Overton, Jofra Archer, Adil Rashid, Saqib Mahmood, Jamie Smith, Mark Wood, Gus Atkinson, Rehan Ahmed

India vs England 5th T20I LIVE SCORE: Sanju Samson(w), Abhishek Sharma, Tilak Varma, Suryakumar Yadav(c), Rinku Singh, Shivam Dube, Hardik Pandya, Axar Patel, Arshdeep Singh, Ravi Bishnoi, Varun Chakravarthy, Harshit Rana, Dhruv Jurel, Washington Sundar, Ramandeep Singh, Mohammed Shami

India vs England 5th T20I LIVE SCORE: We have had an epic series thus far and it is a pitty that it has already been decided in India’s favour. But who knows? Maybe we will see some utterly astonishing T20 cricket today due to practically nothing riding on this match…