India and England head to a Lord’s decider with the series level

There is nothing left in reserve now. India and England walk out at Lord’s on Sunday for the third and final one-day international with the series locked at 1-1, each side having landed one heavy blow and each still hunting for the one that settles it.

India struck first at Edgbaston, where Axar Patel put together the kind of all-round afternoon that decides a match on its own. His four wickets pegged England back to 258, and his unbeaten 57, alongside Washington Sundar’s half-century, carried the chase home by six wickets with more than four overs to spare. It was India’s first win of a bruising tour of the United Kingdom, and it hinted that the tourists had finally found some footing in the fifty-over format.

Root’s near-miss levels the series

England hit back in Cardiff, and they did it through Joe Root. Set 234 to win, Root held the innings together from one end and finished unbeaten on 99, marooned a single run short of a century as Gus Atkinson tucked away the winning runs. He faced 133 balls and hit nine fours, the sort of unfussy, low-risk innings that has come to define his one-day batting. Jofra Archer had earlier taken three wickets to keep India to 233, with Shreyas Iyer and Virat Kohli the only batters to pass fifty.

The result did two things at once. It squared the series, and it laid bare how fine the margins have been between two sides that keep taking turns to dominate.

Gill’s series, India’s bowling puzzle

Shubman Gill has led from the front with the bat, his running total among the best on either side, and India will badly want their captain set at the crease when the pressure arrives on Sunday. The bigger question for the tourists sits with the ball. Hamstring injuries to Varun Chakaravarthy and Harshit Rana thinned the attack before the ODIs even began, and India have leaned on Axar and Washington Sundar to hold things together in the middle overs while the seamers hunt early wickets.

Bumrah’s control up front and Kuldeep Yadav’s wrist spin give India a shape few sides can match on a good day. The trouble has been consistency across fifty overs, the discipline that lets a strong start turn into a defendable total or a chase that never wobbles.

England’s questions, India’s chance

For England, the series is also a health check on a one-day team that has drifted since its white-ball peak. They remain a dangerous batting side, as Root showed, but the questions about their bowling depth and their middle-order balance have not gone away. A win at Lord’s would steady the mood before a long build toward the next global cycle.

India arrive as the higher-ranked ODI outfit and will feel the decider is theirs to take. England know a full house at Lord’s and a series on the line is exactly the stage on which their best cricket tends to arrive. One match, one afternoon, and a series that has refused to pick a winner finally gets forced into a decision.

Follow every ball of the India-England decider