The Australian team started their new year in the colored outfit with a bang by thrashing the Indian side by 10 wickets in the first ODI of the three-match series in Mumbai. After losing the game, Indian opening batsman Shikhar Dhawan revealed the reason why the Men in Blue lost the match.
Dhawan played a superb knock of 74 runs after returning back into the ODI team for the first time since November. He also stitched a 100+ partnership with KL Rahul to take India into a solid position. But the flurry of wickets after that derailed the Indian bogey and they could only muster 255 on the scoreboard.
Talking about the loss, the cricketer from Delhi revealed that losing 4-5 wickets in quick succession was the main reason for their loss. He also noted that they tried to crawl back but the Australian team did not let them.
“We handled those first 10-15 overs very nicely. As I said that where we lost four wickets in a go, that is where the game changed for us, then we were behind the game and then we were trying to cover it, so that is where we went wrong,” Dhawan said.
The left-hand opening batter also explained that the team was looking to get almost 300 runs on the board but the loss of wickets in the middle-order turned out to be lethal for them. Dhawan also highlighted the fact that bowlers could not pick wickets in the first 10 overs, which made the game pretty easy for the Aussies.
“KL (Rahul) got out. That time we planned to accelerate and those four wickets we lost, that’s where we lost the momentum. We were targeting 300 runs but we ended up scoring fewer runs. In bowling, we could not take early wickets. They outplayed us,” added Dhawan.
He concluded by saying that this Australian side is much stronger than the side that toured India last year.
It was David Warner and Aaron Finch who thrashed the Indian bowlers to clinch a 10-wicket victory. It was the second-biggest win in a chase in the history of One-Day International matches. Chasing 256, both opening batsmen were looking determined to take their team to a comfortable victory. Skipper Aaron Finch was the one who started to play aggressive shots and Warner joined him.
They both stitched an unbeaten partnership of 258 runs for the first wickets, which is the third-highest partnership by an Australian pair in ODIs. Warner remained unbeaten on 128 while Finch was not out on 110.
Three out of five Indian bowlers had an economy rate of 7 or more.
Scores:
Australia 258/0 (David Warner 128*, Aaron Finch 110*) beat India 255/10 (Shikhar Dhawan 74, KL Rahul 47; Mitchell Starc 2/56) by 10 wickets.
