The Chepauk pitch wasn’t the easiest to score off as the ball turned and stopped on batters once it lost its shine. There was also no dew, which meant Australia’s spinners were in business throughout the middle overs. Australia’s fielding was electric. And for the third consecutive match, they got Suryakumar Yadav off the first ball despite India sending KL Rahul, Axar Patel and Pandya to prevent exactly that mishap.
“I don’t think it was too many runs,” said Rohit Sharma at the post-match presentation ceremony. “Partnerships are crucial and that’s something we failed to do today. You are brought up playing on these types of wickets, it’s important you apply. After the start, it was important for one batter to carry on and take the game deep. It just didn’t happen.”
The pitch, the occasion, everything called for extravagant shots to be shelved, and graft. Virat Kohli did that with a well-compiled fifty, as did Rahul, both adding 69 runs for the third wicket and steadying India’s chase. But instead of trickling down the target to singles, they tried to muscle their way out. The strategy worked in patches, till it boomeranged massively against the slow bowling of Ashton Agar and Adam Zampa. There was still enough time to regroup. But instead of adopting caution, Pandya speared Zampa’s scrambled seam ball to Steve Smith at cover with Jadeja at the other end and India needing 52 off 39 balls. Jadeja had no choice but to throw caution in the air.
With this win, Australia snapped India’s record of 26 unbeaten home series wins across formats. But India know they had this match within their grasp, especially after the bowlers had restricted Australia to 269.
It was a strange one-day innings from Australia, milking 68 off the first 64 balls, scoring just 70 in the next 104 balls at the expense of five wickets before the last five added 131 runs. No one scored a fifty. And nobody apart from openers Mitchell Marsh and Travis Head and No 8 Sean Abbott aggregated strike rates of over 100. Having capitalised on the first powerplay, the onus was on Australia to build on the invaluable start but they ran into Pandya and Kuldeep Yadav.
Pandya’s medium pace asked to be played more cautiously. But Head, after being dropped by Gill at deep square-leg just two balls earlier, didn’t even try to keep the cut shot down, hitting straight to Kuldeep in the deep. In his next over, Pandya got Steve Smith to hang his bat away from his body and edge to Rahul. Pandya made it three in three overs when Marsh didn’t lean into a drive and got a massive inside edge that crashed into his stumps.
By then, Jadeja was operating like he does, bowling tight lines and keeping the batters guessing with varying his length and speed. Batting at No 4 for the first time in his career, David Warner didn’t get any pace off the ball. At the other end was Marnus Labuschagne, trying desperately to cut, nudge and find the gaps. Kuldeep was quickly thrown in this mix as Warner and Labuschagne tried to resurrect the innings.
After adding 40 runs in 10 overs, Warner inexplicably skipped down the pitch, was beaten in the air by Kuldeep and miscued to long-off. Labuschagne was next to go, failing to clear long-off. The spate of dismissals prompted Alex Carey to ramp up his attack till in the 39th over, Kuldeep got the ball to pitch middle and leg before turning away to spectacularly take the top of his off stump.
That Australia still got 66 runs after the fall of their seventh wicket was largely because of Abbott’s 26-run cameo and some handy runs from Starc and Zampa. But India don’t bat as deep as Australia, and hence should have chased more responsibly. They didn’t. Sharma and Gill started like Australia, setting up the chase with a 65-run stand before falling within the space of 12 runs. Rahul was caught in the deep and Patel was run out because Kohli was ball-watching before Agar took two in two in the form of Kohli and Yadav till India ended the 37th over on 196/6, exactly where Australia too were at this point of their innings. From there, things just went south for India.
