Take the positives out of that then. Better to burn out than fade away and England’s cricketers certainly ended their white‑ball tour of India in a shared magnesium flare at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium. The insistence on building towards the Champions Trophy in June has been so relentless it was tempting to ask Eoin Morgan afterwards what positives he would be taking, what lessons learnt, skill-sets executed from losing eight wickets for eight runs in 19 balls in Bengaluru – on the bare figures, England’s worst batting collapse in any kind of cricket.
Except of course the end was not a reflection of the whole. This was a tour that brought frustration rather than disintegration. Even the meltdown at the Chinnaswamy was not really a pure collapse, more a reaction to a game that was already gone, with no other way left to play. By the same token it is possible to argue England could have won every short‑form game in India before that final thrashing had they not been undone by a series of improbable events.
Related: England collapse hands India a clean sweep of Test, ODI and T20 series
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