Shreyas Iyer on India's humiliating defeat in 3rd T20I: Atrocious, awful, unacceptable

India’s T20I captain Shreyas Iyer feels their loss against England in the third match was ‘atrocious’. The Men in Blue suffered their biggest defeat in T20Is, losing by 125 runs in the third game at Trent Bridge, Nottingham. Chasing a target of 202, India were bundled out for 76, their second-lowest score in T20Is.

Following their defeat, India are now trailing by 0-2, with two matches left to be played in the five-match series. After a crushing loss, Shreyas Iyer didn’t mince words and called the defeat atrocious, adding that losing by such a big margin is unacceptable. 

"I think it was atrocious. I couldn't use a better word, honestly. Losing by such a big margin is definitely not acceptable. First things first, I feel that we need to accept this loss and completely go back to the drawing board and see what we did wrong,” Iyer said at the post-match press conference.

Iyer also mentioned that the wicket was not a 200 surface and losing five wickets in the powerplay further added to their misery.

"Looking at the wicket, I don't think that it was a 200 wicket, first of all, to start with. But other than that, the way we batted, we lost five wickets in the power play. I think that itself didn't create momentum, and definitely I feel that we lost over there," Iyer said.

Can India bounce back in Bristol?

The India skipper also lamented the poor execution from the batters.

"And even in our batting, I think when you're chasing 200, you need to pace up your innings. You need to have a set pattern of how you're going to go about that inning. So we fell a bit short in terms of that. So definitely execution was awful. We've played awful cricket for sure, but a lot of learnings from it as well,” he added.

India succumbed to their fourth successive defeat (in completed matches) under Shreyas Iyer’s captaincy in Nottingham, having already lost 0-2 to Ireland in June. The Men in Blue are staring at another series defeat and will be desperate for a victory in the fourth T20I on Thursday, July 9 at County Ground, Bristol.