England were blown away for 110 in the first one-day international against India, as their strongest batting line-up since the 2019 World Cup final was shredded by Jasprit Bumrah at The Kia Oval.
The hosts welcomed back Ben Stokes, Jonny Bairstow and Joe Root from Test duty, with the trio having missed the T20 series defeat. They lined up alongside captain Jos Buttler in an ODI for the first time since that famous day at Lord’s three years ago.
But things went spectacularly wrong as England’s star-studded top six recorded four ducks. Stokes and Root lasted just three balls between them, with Jason Roy and Liam Livingstone also failing to score.
Bumrah took four wickets in a sizzling first spell and returned to finish things off as he recorded career-best figures of six for 19, leaving England all out with 24.4 overs unused.
With Buttler out for 30 and the scoreboard teetering at 68 for eight, they were on course for a new record low score. But they ticked past their previous mark of 86 thanks to a stand of 35 between David Willey and Brydon Carse.
After choosing to bowl first on a green deck, India kicked off the new-ball destruction in the second over of the day, with Roy’s eagerness to make a statement at the top of the order getting the better of him.
He ignored a warning after an attempted cover drive against Bumrah swung through the gate, repeating the stroke off the very next ball and dragging down his stumps via a massive inside edge.
That brought England’s banker, Root, to the crease with almost a full innings open for him to bat long and deep. Instead, he lasted just two balls. Looking to access his favourite scoring area towards third man he played away from his body and grazed a lifter from Bumrah straight through to Rishabh Pant behind the stumps.
In came England’s newly all-conquering Test skipper Stokes, no stranger to a crisis, but his first ODI in a year brought him a golden duck.
He was not quite blameless, but this was Mohammed Shami’s wicket fair and square. Attacking the left-hander from round the wicket he got one to jag in hard off the pitch, clipping the inside edge as Stokes pushed forward uncertainly.
He might have got away with it had Pant been less alert behind the stumps, but he threw himself down the leg side and snatched the ball with his right glove to make it seven for three.
The trio of zeros on the scorecard told a sorry tale for England, with back-to-back boundaries off Buttler’s first two balls barely even registering amid the chaos.
Bairstow had seen all of it unfold from the non-striker’s end but was soon an active participant. Fresh from a career-best run of red-ball form, he pieced together seven before wafting at the relentless Bumrah and offering what would have been a regulation catch for first slip.
But Pant decided to take the responsibility himself, diving in front of Rohit Sharma and snapping up his third dismissal of the day with one glove. Worse was still to come in the shape of Livingstone, who confronted the rough conditions by skipping down the track at Bumrah and exposing his stumps with predictably messy results.
Moeen Ali could have added a fifth duck when he offered a half-chance off the rampant Bumrah, but mustered 14 before offering a low caught-and-bowled to Prasidh Krishna.
Buttler had been relatively immune to the drama, scoring six boundaries and ticking along at a run-a-ball before top-edging a pull off Shami to deep square.
That was the last chance of a proper resistance and, when Shami cleaned up Craig Overton on a classically good length, an unwanted record appeared to be incoming.
Willey (21) and Carse (15) took that off the cards, squeezing the score into three figures with a mixture of resolve and good fortune, before the returning Bumrah took care of both to wrap things up in the 26th over of a scheduled 50.
