India leads 1-0 but Australia can bounce back

India took the 1st game of the series and the early lead though they weren’t totally convincing. They had to rely on a few great individual performances and were helped by the weather interruption of the Australian run chase.

After losing the toss and being asked to bowl, Australia started really well with Coulter-Nile getting good sideways movement early in the Indian innings. He picked up Rahane, Kohli and Pandey in his first 3 overs with the new ball. Then the surprise packet of the Australian bowling attack, Marcus Stonis added the wickets of Sharma and Jadav in the middle overs with some short balls that drew poor shots. India was reeling at 5 for 87 after 21 overs.

It was all smiles for the Australian bowlers early in the game

But that was probably the end of the good news for Australia as Hardik Pandya and MS Dhoni put together a quality 118 run partnership. Pandya played the role of aggressor and smashed five sixes on the way to his 83 of 66 balls to be dismissed in the 41st over. Meanwhile Dhoni started out grinding his way through the middle overs and anchoring the innings but then exploding during the death overs in trademark style to finish with 79 off 88, securing a very respectable 1st innings total of 7 for 281.

Pandya and Dhoni fight back with some strong hitting

Then the rain hit during the innings break and caused a significant delay that reduced the Australian chase to something more resembling a T20 match (well T21 if we’re being precise). With a reduced target of 164 and a required run rate of over 7.8 Warner smashed a loose ball for four off the first delivery and he looked in good touch, but surprise opening partner Hilton Cartwright struggled to score. After a few near misses he was bowled in the 4th over scoring just 1 run (off an outside edge) from 8 deliveries.

The rest of the Australian batsmen then struggled to pick up the rate with the wrist spinning duo of Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal taking full toll of the steepening run rate and picking up 5 wickets between them. Glenn Maxwell (a near T20 specialist) was the only one to offer stiff resistance with an impressive 39 off 18 balls including 4 sixes but with 7 Australian batsmen all getting single digit scores there wasn’t enough support to get near the target and Australia fell 27 runs short.

Scoreboard pressure and wrist spin got the better of the Aussie bats

Australia will be looking to bounce back in the 2nd ODI to be played at Kolkata where preparations have been disrupted by bad weather and the pitch is reported to have a bit of grass on it that may suit the Aussie bowlers. It is rare to find grass on an Indian pitch and if it’s underdone then we might see some good bounce and seam movement for the Australian fast bowlers. If they can get off to a good start like they did in the first game and then follow through with wickets in the middle overs they will be in with a very good chance of restricting the Indian total and levelling the series.

It is unlikely that India will change their team much, but Australia might have to rethink the opening partnership and perhaps we will see Travis Head promoted up the order as was suggested was likely in our last post. Surely he can’t do worse than Cartwright in the first game….

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