England v India: Sooryavanshi makes historic debut in second T20 international - live

Key events

14th over: India 138-3 (Kishan 35, Dube 2) Harry Brook is such an interesting captain. He seems to have no feel at all for the gravity of the post, but he does have a feel for the music of the game. He responds to the wicket by bringing back his sharpest weapon, Jofra Archer – who bowls a very good over for no reward, rushing Shivam Dube into a chip with a bouncer and then drawing an edge from Kishan that races away for four.

Archer (3-0-23-0) is well on his way to one of the all-time great none-fors.

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13th over: India 130-3 (Kishan 29, Dube 0) England needed that. After coming together at 65-2, Iyer and Kishan doubled the score.

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Updated at 10.38 EDT

Wicket! Shreyas Iyer c Banton b Dawson 37 (India 130-3)

Clever from Dawson. After being swung for six by Iyer, he sees him coming down the track and snares him with a wide ball outside off, slogged to deep extra and well held by Tom Banton, running in.

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12th over: India 118-2 (Kishan 26, Iyer 28) Brook, who does love a bowling change, replaces Curran with Tongue. He’s faster, fuller and, in a T20, easier for top players to face. Iyer plays a lovely guide for four, then takes a blow to the hand which needs some treatment. Happily, he’s OK to continue.

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11th over: India 108-2 (Kishan 24, Iyer 20) Rashid returns and has Kishan dropped! He was lured into a loose slog-sweep that went straight to Phil Salt at deep midwicket. Deep but not deep enough, as he was a few yards in from the rope and could only tip the ball over the bar. It dribbled away for four, and Kishan slammed the next ball to the cover boundary. Is that what they call rubbing Salt in the wound?

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Drinks! India pegged back

10th over: India 96-2 (Kishan 14, Iyer 18) Off goes Rashid, with 1-0-9-0, and back comes Curran. Kishan cuts him for four with brutally fast hands, but Curran, who can go brutally slow when he feels like it, turns things round with two successive dots. India won the powerplay, narrowly (65-2), but England have done well to restrict these two to 31 in the past four overs.

Asked what would be a good score here, Nasser Hussain chuckles ruefully and says “220?” The average total since 2018 here is apparently 200 or so, but England did get 304 last year.

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9th over: India 89-2 (Kishan 9, Iyer 16) Liam Dawson, varying his pace craftily, gets the T20 spinner’s version of a maiden: an over that goes for a single off every ball. The person in charge of the music responds with a burst of Blame It On The Boogie from The Jacksons. Don’t blame it on the sunshine – not that there is any.

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Updated at 10.13 EDT

8th over: India 83-2 (Kishan 6, Iyer 13) Harry Brook brings on his other veteran spinner, Adil Rashid, so now it’s basically the Fathers’ Match. And the dads are not being treated with total respect. Iyer collects another boundary by crossing a pull with an on-drive.

“Sooryavanshi may be a significantly better cricket player than I was at his age, or am now, ever have been or will be,” says Tom van der Gucht, “but I’m willing to bet that the 15-year-old me would have mopped the floor with him on the battlefield of Citadel Miniatures and I’m had pretty sure I had a more comprehensive collection of Britpop-era copies of NME, not to mention a more encyclopedic knowledge of the Sylvester McCoy era of Dr Who at his age, so I think I know who’s winning in life.”

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7th over: India 74-2 (Kishan 3, Iyer 7) Suddenly it’s a different ball game as Liam Dawson comes on and everything calms down. Ishan Kishan gets ’em in singles, while Shreyas Iyer plays a late cut for four. It’s cricket as we knew it before Sooryavanshi was born. But they still get nine off the over.

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Updated at 10.07 EDT

Wicket! Abhishek Sharma c Banton b Curran 43 (India 65-2)

6th over: India 65-2 (Kishan 1) Brook makes another change, turning to Sam Curran. Like Jacks, he instantly finds himself under heavy fire. Abhishek chops for four, swings for four more, gets away with a top edge, straight-drives for four more – but then holes out! He clipped a full ball, very cleanly, but straight to Tom Banton at deep square.

So the powerplay ends with honours just about even. We’ve had runs and wickets, fours and sixes, a stumping and a catch, many a play-and-miss, and a first appearance from a boy wonder that was short but sweet.

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Updated at 10.18 EDT

5th over: India 50-1 (Sharma 30, Kishan 0) So Brook’s bold response pays off. The crowd are disappointed to see Sooryavanshi go, but maybe that’s the right start for him: an explosive cameo, showing his promise without giving him anything he will struggle to live up to. Not that he appears to struggle at all.

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WICKET! Sooryavanshi st Buttler b Jacks 14 (India 50-1)

The boy wonder is done for! Jacks lures him down the track, he goes back to playing at thin air, and he is easily stumped by a man more than twice his age.

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Updated at 10.01 EDT

Mid-4th over: India 50-0 (Sharma 30, Sooryavanshi 14) What would you do if you were the captain having to cope with this? Harry Brook decides to switch to spin, which, if he’d done it in an episode of Yes Minister, would have been described as bold, very bold. Will Jacks’ first ball is slapped for four, his second squirted for four more, but then …

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Updated at 09.54 EDT

3rd over: India 41-0 (Sharma 21, Sooryavanshi 14) Sooryvanshi, in the mood now, hits another six – just a pick-up shot off Tongue, easy as you like. Sharma, not to be outshone, flashes for four, off-drives for six and cover-drives for three. Welcome to T20 internationals, Josh: that’s 20 off your second over.

“I’m sort of OK with the fact that Sooryavanshi is 15,” says Matt Dony. “I mean, some 15 year olds are, indeed, mature and capable and preternaturally talented. But I think you mistyped and stated that he was born in 2011. That can’t be right, can it? Wouldn’t that make him about 5 or 6? If 2011 was truly 15 years ago, that would put me in my mid-40s? Oh. Right. Nuts…”

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3rd over: India 21-0 (Sharma 8, Sooryavanshi 8) Archer beats Sharma twice outside off. The wind, if anything, is bothering the batters more than the bowlers. But when Archer tries a yorker, Sharma does well, flicking the wrists to turn a block into a glance for four.

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Sooryavanshi hits his first six! Off his first ball from Archer, his fellow Royal. He gets down low, plays something between a pull and a ramp and sends tha ball whirling into the crowd. After four or five balls, he has made his presence felt already.

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Updated at 09.54 EDT

2nd over: India 10-0 (Sharma 4, Sooryavanshi 1) Second ball: another lavish play, another miss. Third ball: yet another miss, as Sooryavanshi shapes to whip, but it’s a wide outside leg, in fact five wides. When he finally gets bat on ball, to his third legitimate delivery, he jams down on a yorker, and gets his first run for India from an inside edge! Tongue then beats Sharma outside off too.

Somewhere in the crowd, a Lancashire member of a certain age may be muttering, “Not much to him, this lad. What’s all the fuss about?”

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Updated at 09.44 EDT

Sooryavanshi faces his first ball in international cricket… and misses! He flashed outside off at Josh Tongue, whose lift was too much for him.

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1st over: India 4-0 (Sharma 4, Sooryavanshi 0) Never mind the prodigy, Abhishek can play a bit too. Archer starts well, beating him with a lifter, but the next ball is swished over slip for four, with one hand off the bat. Archer beats him again, and again, before finishing with a rap on the glove. The wind assisted both the bowler’s movement, away from the left-hander, and the lone scoring shot.

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Sooryavanshi is out there, waiting to face his first ball in international cricket … which may well be from Jofra Archer, his team-mate at the Rajasthan Royals. But it will be Abhishek Sharma who faces the first ball of the day.

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Fun fact. Adil Rashid, England’s senior pro, was playing international cricket before Vaibhav Sooryavanshi was conceived. Rashid made his debut for England’s T20 team on 5 June 2009; Sooryavanshi was born on 27 March 2011.

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The teams

England have a debutant of their own – Josh Tongue, making his first appearance for them in a red shirt after doing taking dozens of wickets in a white one. Jofra Archer returns too. It’s always good to see him and Tongue is well worth a go, but it’s bizarre that there is no room for Saqib Mahmood. He shone in the gloom on Wednesday and would surely have relished the chance to maintain his red-hot form in front of his home crowd. The decision feels premeditated, rather than a response to the situation.

India 1 Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, 2 Abhishek Sharma, 3 Ishan Kishan (wkt), 4 Shreyas Iyer (capt), 5 Tilak Varma, 6 Shivam Dube, 7 Harshit Rana, 8 Axar Patel, 9 Ravi Bishnoi, 10 Arshdeep Singh, 11 Varun Chakravarthy.

England 1 Phil Salt, 2 Jos Buttler (wkt), 3 Harry Brook (capt), 4 Jacob Bethell, 5 Tom Banton, 6 Sam Curran, 7 Will Jacks, 8 Liam Dawson, 9 Adil Rashid, 10 Jofra Archer, 11 Josh Tongue.

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The first email comes in from Guy Hornsby. “I know this may be down for some as another meaningless bilateral,” he says, “but even before Sooryavanshi’s debut was announced, this feels bigger than that.

“Two teams packed with stars, all the Test players back for England, and a raucous Old Trafford full of blue shirts all urging on their team to show England who is boss in the white ball game. I am certainly buzzing, and I’ve only had an ice cream!”

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Iyer’s decision allows the crowd to see Vaibhav Sooryavanshi right away. His fearless hitting has already made him a superstar in the IPL: now we’ll see if he can do it on a blustery Saturday in Manchester. He will become India’s youngest-ever cricketer, beating the record held for decades by Sachin Tendulkar. He was born in 2011, for goodness’ sake. You couldn’t make him up.

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Toss: India win and bat first

It’s so windy at Old Trafford that Shreyas Iyer’s cap blows off in mid-toss. But he doesn’t lose his composure, calls right and decides to make England’s bowlers cope with the gale.

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Sooryavanshi starts!

They’ve seen sense and selected him! At the tender age of 15. What a moment.

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Preamble

Afternoon everyone and welcome to England’s smallest game of the weekend. It’s smaller than the football, it’s smaller than the rugby, and it’s way smaller than the women’s cricket. While Nat Sciver-Brunt’s team have a World Cup final, the men are playing the second game in a T20 series that started with a wash-out and may be forgotten before it has even been noticed.

But every international fixture is big for somebody. This second game between England and India is big for the ECB, whose profits for the financial year hinge on hosting India for these two white-ball series. It’s big for English cricket, which is still reeling from Ben Stokes’ shotgun retirement. It’s big for Harry Brook, who needs to carry himself like an England captain, rather than the figure he cut last Sunday – the man at the stag weekend who’s still drunk on the flight home.

It’s big for Sam Curran, belatedly being recognised as a realistic option to succeed Stokes as the Test all-rounder and, if they really are going to burden Brook with the Test captaincy, to take over the white-ball teams. And it’s big for Jos Buttler, who, since a buccaneering 83 in his last appearance for England at Old Trafford, has gone 20 innings without a fifty – or even a forty.

It could be big, too, for someone who is not expected to play: Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, the teenage wonderboy who had to watch on Wednesday as his elders and lessers at the top of the Indian order limped to 6 for 2. The signs are that Sooryavanshi won’t be picked today either, but his international debut is surely just a flop away.

As always with international sport, there are subplots to spare, so do stick around if you can. The weather forecast is good for Manchester, and I’ll be back at 2pm (BST) with the toss and the teams.

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