England vs. India

Two things that were strange about this match:

1. Sixes hit by England: 13. Sixes hit by India: 1 (!).
2. England were at 160 runs at the end of the 22nd over. As wickets fell, they slowed down to finish at 337/7. India were 226/4 at the beginning of the 40th over. They barely accelerated to finish at 306/5.

Sharma and Kohli gave the rest of the team a significant platform to chase 338 but the lack of urgency was really surprising. The one and only six of the entire Indian innings came in the 50th over! The whole time I was thinking, "What are you guys waiting for?"

The match was awesome for 90 overs. The last 10 were just bizarre and puzzling.

India has two matches left. Winning only one of them would guarantee them passage through to the semi-finals. Today, what could have been the most epic run chase in World Cup history ended up as a slow, sad, and strange defeat.

Comments

[Tambi Dude]

The answer you are looking for is NRR. Rather than chase 337 and lose by 150 runs, India decided to score as much as possible to keep the NRR healthy. Even if India lose against BD and Lanka, based on current NRR they are above NZ and way above Pak. By now it is clear to any team that qualifying for SF should be the only goal and not ranking from 1-4. Once in SF you have 25% chance of winning.
Kohli does this in IPL also when instead of chasing hopeless target they just score enough to keep NRR high, in case it turns out to be vital.

[Isaac Schrödinger]

It would be cautious and sensible for India to care about the net run rate if their last two matches were against Australia and New Zealand.

They will face Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, instead. To care about net run rate in this case is ultra-defensive. India has Sharma (3 centuries in 6 matches!), the ever-reliable Kohli, and the number one bowler in ODIs. They should thrash those two teams to take momentum into the semi-finals.

Given their lesser opponents in the next week, I think they should have gone for it.

The other possibility is that they really couldn't chase the high total which would be more alarming for their fans.

[Tambi Dude]

Chasing 338 successfully would have been a record. I think the body language and the attitude of the team in the first ten overs made it abundantly clear that they were not too keen on winning.
Let us also not rule out the possibility that they had an additional motivation to let Eng win. After all India would prefer facing them in SF or F rather a resurgent Pakistan.