Jonny Bairstow scored a blistering 124, as England defeated India by 6 wickets in the second one day international at Pune on Friday.
India included Rishabh Pant in place of injured Shreyas Iyer while England on the other hand included Reece Topley, Liam Livingstone and Dawid Malan for Mark Wood, Eoin Morgan and Sam Billings.
Stand-in English skipper Jos Buttler won the toss and asked the hosts to bat first. Shikhar Dhawan departed early as he edged a Topley delivery to Ben Stokes at slips.
The pair of Virat Kohli and KL Rahul stitched together a 121-run stand for the third wicket before the former fell caught behind by Buttler off Adil Rashid for a solid 66.
Rahul along with dashing wicket keeper Rishabh Pant added 113 runs for the fourth wicket stand. The former after reaching his hundred was caught at deep midwicket by Topley off Tom Curran.
Pant’s 40 ball 77 and Hardik Pandya’s quickfire 35 helped India reach 336/6 after 50 overs.
Reece Topley was the pick of the bowlers with figures of 2/50.
Chasing 337, England got off to a magnificent start with Jason Roy and Jonny Bairstow put on 116 runs for the opening wicket. Roy was run out courtesy a brilliant piece of fielding at midwicket from Rohit Sharma.
Ben Stokes pulverised the Indian bowlers by smashing a 52-ball 99 to turn the game in England’s favour. The all rounder fell one run short of what would have been a fantastic century as he skied a Bhuvneshwar delivery to wicket keeper Pant.
Prasidh Krishna dismissed Jonny Bairstow and Jos Buttler in quick succession to give a glimmer of hope to the hosts.
Dawid Malan and Liam Livingstone made the chase comfortable with an unbeaten 50 run stand for the fifth wicket, as the visitors overhauled the target with 6.3 overs to spare.
Jonny Bairstow was declared the Man of the Match. With this victory England level the three match series 1-1. The third and the final one dayer would be played on 28 March, Sunday.