New Delhi:
The day belongs to the spinners and it wouldn’t be wrong to say that the day belongs to the bowlers. How often do we see two teams bowling out each other in a fifty over game?
With this, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that we witnessed a crackerjack of a game which eventually led them to win their 500th ODI game and take a 2-0 lead in this five-match ODI series.
On the typical Nagpur wicket, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that the runs were hard to come by. In these circumstances, the Australian skipper Aaron Finch won the toss and asked the opposition to have a bat first in the scorching Nagpur heat.
For India, Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma started off the proceedings and what followed was probably guessable if one is following Indian cricket closely – which is, India loses one of the two openers early in the innings. In this case, it was Rohit Sharma who was sent back to the pavilion for a duck in the first over itself by Pat Cummins.
His departure led Virat Kohli to the crease, who along with Shikhar Dhawan tried to rebuild India’s innings. The duo started to play down the track and hammer the loose delivery here and there. However, just when both Shikhar and Kohli were looking settled, India lost the former, who was picked leg before the wicket by Glenn Maxwell.
Once Dhawan departed we saw a turnaround in the batting line up by the team management. Vijay Shankar was promoted ahead of two match-winners MS Dhoni and Kedar Jadhav. The decision was more to do with experimentation than anything else. Interestingly, the decision proved to be right as Shankar looked really confident at the crease and smashed bowlers around the ground.
Shankar went onto score his highest ODI score (46) before getting out in the most disappointing manner possible. Post this, India lost a wicket in pairs which eventually led India to finish 10-15 runs short.
India finished with 250 runs, with Virat Kohli scoring almost fifty per cent of the runs. Kohli scored his 40th ODI ton as he made 116 runs off 120 balls.
In reply, Australia started in a convincing fashion with both Aaron Finch and Usman Khawaja and registered an 83-run partnership. Once Aaron Finch departed, Khawaja followed his skipper in the next over itself.
Australia had a few partnerships post that but were not able to make the partnerships turn into big. Stoinis and Handscomb were the stand out performers for men-in-yellow scoring 52 and 48 but wasn’t enough to square the series.
In the end, Vijay Shankar bowled over of his life to let Inia win their 500th one-day International.
Brief Score:
IND: 250/10 in 48.2 overs (V Kohli 116; P Cummins 4/29)
AUS: 242/10 in 49.3 overs (Stoinis 52; K Yadav 3/54)
