Hardik Pandya and Rishabh Pant excelled for India, leading them to a five-wicket victory that led to their 2-1 aggregate win in the series. With India chasing 260, England seamer Reece Topley took three wickets in the first nine overs in the second ODI at Lord’s in his 6-24 chase to reduce the tourists to 38-3.
Jos Buttler missed the opportunity to stump out Rishabh Pant when he was only on 18, and he scored 125 runs to pay off England to lead his side to victory.
Butler, who was England’s top scorer with 60 off 80 balls, said: “If you give chances to good players they will probably hurt you.
“We had maybe half a chance, maybe, got down to fine leg with Hardik Pandya too and if we had taken those chances, maybe India would have had a pretty good catch in the game with a very long tail. But [with] We have to take all our chances to have a chance to win the score we scored.
“Getting an early wicket was fantastic and we created two chances for the guys who really took the game away from us, so I guess that’s where we lost,” he said.
“I think we were trying to find ways to make wickets. I think it’s been a pretty tough schedule too,” Butler said.
“He [Topley] has been fantastic. He’s got his chance, he clearly did a man of the match performance in the T20 at Trent Bridge as well, so it’s great to see him do so well.”
England were unable to bat in their 50 overs in all three of their ODIs against India, which was Butler’s first series as captain, since predecessor Eoin Morgan had retired from international cricket.
Butler said: “We haven’t batted at our best [over the summer] yet. We just have to play better in the long run.
“I missed an opportunity today, but I don’t think it has anything to do with captaincy. I am an experienced cricketer but I am a young captain, so I think there is no need to worry too much about it. There is so much to learn, a lot to try and work on.