Jos Buttler tipped his hat to a rampant India side as he conceded England were merely 'outplayed' during a 50-run defeat in the first of three T20 internationals at The Ageas Bowl on Thursday night.
It marked a less-than-perfect curtain-raiser to Buttler's tenure as captain following the retirement of Eoin Morgan as he fell to a first-ball duck off the impressive bowling of Bhuvneshwar Kumar.
His early departure set the tone for an England chase that never quite got going, with the hosts eventually bowled out for 148 in 19.3 overs after being set a target of 199 to win.
"We've been outplayed today, I thought India bowled fantastically well with the new ball, they put us under a lot of pressure and we couldn't really get back in the game from that point," said Buttler.
"I thought we came back really well in the second half of their innings, we bowled with a lot of bravery, we kept trying to chase wickets and thought maybe a little bit above par, but the way they bowled at the start there, the ball swung quite consistently for the first six overs and they took early wickets."
India elected to bat and preceded to race out the blocks behind Deepak Hooda (33 off 17) and Suryakumar Yadav (39 off 19), before Player of the Match Hardik Pandya fired 51 from 33 to maintain the front-foot approach.
Such was the high-powered batting that England possessed the contest began to favour the hosts slightly when they managed to hold their opponents shy of the 200 mark.
Instead, Bhuvneshwar and Arshdeep Singh wreaked havoc with their swing bowling, while the outstanding Hardik racked up four wickets to nullify any flicker of momentum that might have been provided by one of Dawid Malan (21), Harry Brook (28) or Moeen Ali (36).
"I think
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