India's batters were blown away by England's pace at Trent Bridge and were taught a clear lesson: if the IPL is like playing on "easy" mode, international cricket in unfamiliar conditions is like going "back to normal".
That was the simple verdict given by Jofra Archer, who shared 7 for 57 with his new-ball partner Josh Tongue. Tongue finished with figures of 4 for 28 from his four overs, his first T20I wickets after a wicketless debut in Manchester, but Archer was named Player of the Match after doing the early damage.
He had Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, his Rajasthan Royals team-mate, caught behind when he gloved a vicious leg-stump bouncer through to Jos Buttler, then removed Shreyas Iyer flicking a half-volley to deep square leg and induced an edge behind from Axar Patel with a hard-length ball outside off stump.
All three of Archer's wickets were clocked at 90mph or above; per CricViz, England's average speed of 89.9mph (144.7kph) from seamers in the powerplay was their quickest ever in T20Is. Tongue also struck twice with the new ball, having Abhishek Sharma caught at deep point and Ishan Kishan at deep backward square leg as India struggled to adjust to the extra bounce.
"It goes back to normal here," Archer said, when asked to compare conditions to those he had encountered at the IPL. "You try to bowl straight and good length, whereas over there, because they make it so easy [for batters] and the boundaries are so small, you have to be really, really particular. Whereas here, I feel like your margin for error is a little bit bigger.
"At the IPL, sometimes 200 isn't safe," he added. "With 200 on the board on that wicket, I don't want to say [we were] confident, but I feel like they would have taken a really special innings there to lose the game. I'm just glad everybody chipped in. Everybody that bowled got wickets today, so I'm just glad to win."
Archer and Tongue have struck up a close friendship over the past year and they formed a potent combination with the new ball. Archer presented Tongue with his T20I cap in Manchester on Saturday and said he felt "a little bit emotional", to the extent he had to pause midway through his speech. "We've got a good relationship," Tongue said.
They have even performed the same 'C' gesture when celebrating wickets this summer, though Archer declined to elaborate on its meaning: "That's me and Tonguey's thing. We'll keep it a secret," he said.
"I enjoy bowling with him," Archer added. "I've bowled with him every game so far since I've been back for the summer, so I really enjoy bouncing ideas off him, seeing what [each] end is doing, and if cross-seams or whatever [are working]. He also passes the information on as well - he's not a hoarder - so it's really enjoyable."
Gautam Gambhir, India's head coach, took a similar view to Archer as he reflected on four successive defeats on their UK tour. "You don't become a bad team after four games, do you?" he said. "There are the results: if you don't read the conditions and you don't play the conditions better, you will end up being on the losing side."
This was not an impossible surface by any means, as England proved by posting 201 for 7, but it required a determined 70 from Phil Salt - and some sloppy Indian fielding - for them to post that many. "We recognised it was a tough pitch to hit [balls] from the top of the stumps," Harry Brook said. "To get 200 on a tricky surface was phenomenal."
England have quietly built a formidable T20 record under Brook's leadership, and have proved their adaptability across conditions. They ran India close at the T20 World Cup in March, going down by just seven runs in a high-scoring semi-final at the Wankhede, and now have an unassailable 2-0 lead over them in this series.
This was only the third time that England have taken five wickets in a T20I powerplay, but the second this year. Then, against Sri Lanka at the World Cup, three of those five fell to Will Jacks on a turning pitch in Pallekele; here, it was pace that blew India away. It is the sign of a good team that they can adjust to wildly different surfaces.
They have won 18 out of 21 completed games since Brook took over as T20 captain last June, with one of those defeats in a rain-shortened five-over shoot-out to South Africa. They have also continued to back the same players that took them deep in the World Cup, focusing on results, in contrast to India's decision to plan for the 2028 edition in two-and-a-half years' time.
Brook has been instrumental in backing several players - Jacks, Tom Banton and Liam Dawson were all his picks - and has kept things as simple as possible, relying on his team-mates' vast experience. "The bowlers knew exactly what we needed to do: hit the top of the stumps with the occasional bouncer," he said on Tuesday. "As simple as it sounds, it worked beautifully tonight."
Sometimes in T20 cricket, the simple answer is the right one.