The Great Rivalry’s Great first ODI match of the year 2020 took place and it had Australia’s name mostly all over it. Australia gained an advantage with Hardik Pandya still not bowling for India, and them winning the toss and having a lot of luck in their favor as well, it seemed. Analysis and report of the whole match but first up talking about what Spielens – Prakhar Drolia predictions went right!
The toss prediction was the only which was wrong as Australis’s skipper Aaron Finch won the toss and chose to bat first!
Now, onto the analysis!
THE FIRST INNINGS
Australia had chosen to bat first and Aaron Finch and David Warner stepped out to bat on a very sunny day. The pitch was hard to understand for the bowlers and just like at the start of the second innings, the Indian bowler, who were back in Australia after a long time and were put into explore the pitch, took time and had some bad luck and some not so good and deep lines, helped Australia complete the first 10 overs without any loss of wickets. Bumrah and Shami were just not being able to swing the ball and hit the required line, and this was played well by the Australian batsmen who were not looking a very aggressive start but were strategically stealing runs by running between the wickets and saving wickets.
The first 10 overs had set the foundation for the Australian side, as the next few overs also went in the spinners trying to understand the pitch, during which a few opportunities were created as Chahal was bowling varying lengths and lines, getting the ball to turn away, with that occasional wide ball which was successful in creating an opportunity. The opportunities were few and none of them converted till the penultimate ball of the 28th over when Md. Shami was able to get a slight edge on the ball, which were caught by the safe hands of KL Rahul.
More than half of the innings went wicketless, and now the remaining 10 players and mainly the remaining 6 proper batsmen were just playing a T20 match which meant that every new batsman who came in had the right to hit and explore the boundaries. That is exactly what Steve Smith, who got lucky once and got an extra life in a way, and the rest did, especially Maxwell, who did not have a great IPL.
Aaron Finch was also set for a long innings as he played out the spinners quite nicely and was able to rotate strike. He played a captain’s innings, with no hurry to take strike to make a century and then focusing on helping the team pickup as many runs as possible. After his century, he went on to total hitting mode and got out as a result, after what was an innings that set the pace for Australia as they were able to bank on it and slowly and steadily increase their pace.
Steve Smith, then took the baton from his former partner on crease – Aaron Finch, when he got out and played a long innings but at a higher strike rate as he was later accompanied by Glenn Maxwell, who was back in form, and played some quirky shots to score 45 runs in just 18 balls before getting out on the 19th ball that he faced, scoring at a strike rate of 236.84 – The highest of anyone in the whole innings. That cameo innings by Maxwell proved very crucial as when he got out the score for Australia was now a wonderful 328 runs with just 5.1 overs left.
The batsmen from the Australian side did not have to take a lot of risks, and when they did do an experiment which went wrong or had a wrong flick of the bat, then misfields had plagued the first innings and that helped Australia ramp up a whole bunch of runs to get that extra advantage and set a target of 375 runs for the Indian team to chase, which wasn’t a huge target as such on the pitch in Sydney which wasn’t the best pitch the bowlers could have demanded but still a lot of drama took place in the second innings, which ended in a great manner from the Australian perspective and not so great from the Indian perspective.
THE SECOND INNINGS
The second innings had one major mistake that took place in the hands of the Indian batsmen at the start of the innings itself. The mistake which defined the whole of the second innings. The mistake which helped the Australian team immensely and that was the mistake of playing a little too aggressively. Mayank Agarwal’s wicket could be understandable since he is still a little inexperienced and a whole galore of batsmen where there to come after him. But the wicket of Virat Kohli, which he played right into the hands of Aaron Finch was a disappointing performance from him as at that point, hitting every ball or even every alternate ball for a boundary was not a requirement rather Kohli and Dhawan could have established a proper long partnership. Shreyas Iyer had a bit of bad luck as well against the bounce and then there was KL Rahul.
After that, the partnership that formed was a great partnership as both of the players were in good – sync but as the innings progressed, and with the likes of Marcus Stoinis, who was the 6th bowler for Australia bowling with a great economy and some tight overs, it seemed as if both players started to being not able to comprehend their roles and failed under pressure and when the wicket of Shikhar Dhawan fell due to the pressure, that was the end of the hopes for India, and the even Pandya got out, unluckily for India and then it was Australia all along whose sail was abrupted a little at times by a couple of boundaries by Jadeja first and then Shami or Saini.
Josh Hazlewood set the tone with his bowling at the start and kept a fairly good economy and that provided a good support but Adam Zampa gave a great bowling performance and it was his wickets, the wickets that he took, which helped seal the game for Australia, although he was hit off quite a lot by the Indian batsmen. The 6th bowler, the all-rounder, Marcus Stoinis, who ha to go off the field after suffering a bit of an injury, proved to be the player who created the difference in favor of Australia and helped Australia in a match where bowlers like Cummins and Starc, who seemed to have lost their lengths a bit in the first few over, failed as per their standards.
In the end it was Australia who won by 66 runs after a great performance from their side and a dismal performance by the Indian side.
|AUSTRALIA LEAD THE DETTOL ODI SERIES 1 – 0 AGAISNT INDIA NOW AND 2 EXCITING MATCHES STILL LEFT TO GO|
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