The Indian leg-spinner, Yuzvendra Chahal reckons that the England batsmen made a lesser amount of mistakes in the second Twenty20 as compared to the Manchester game and consequently won the game as well. England won the second T20I by five wickets to level the three-match series 1-1. Like his skipper Virat Kohli, Chahal also revealed that playing against Kuldeep Yadav better was key to England victory.

Talking to the media after the game, Yuzi said, “Kuldeep had bowled really well in the last game but in this game, they played him more carefully. In the last game, they made too many mistakes, but they have also come here to improve and play. This time around they took calculated risks against Kuldeep. They did not hit out against him in the first three overs. The fact that with a target of just 150-odd we took the game to the last over means we bowled well.”

The pitch conditions at Cardiff was the bit different from the last game in Manchester. There was a small layer of grass owing to which the new ball was flying around. It was a key factor why India’s top-order didn’t get the best of the start after being put into bat and despite Virat Kohli’s 47 off 38 balls, the visitors could only finish with a sub-par 148-5.

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Talking about the same, Chahal said, “The wicket was a bit helpful for the medium pacers because it was a seaming wicket. So you will see that neither team was able to score big in the powerplay. You can say that we could have defended 150 if we could have prevented those 2-3 sixes in the end. During the break, we didn’t talk about being 20-30 runs short. When we scored 150-odd on this wicket, we thought we could defend it. We didn’t think we needed 170-180 here because the wicket was totally different. The ball wasn’t coming that well onto the bat here.”

When asked about if Umesh Yadav filled the gap of Jasprit Bumrah, the leg-spinner replied, “If you see the way Umesh bhai has been bowling from the IPL, and even in the Afghanistan Test, he has been very confident in his bowling. This is only his third international T20 match since 2012 but you can see the maturity level at which he is bowling, both at the start and in the death overs. The kind of start we want in the first six overs, he is delivering wickets for us.”