Two games into their five game series against India, the Australian Cricket Team are reeling after having lost both games fairly convincingly. The tour now moves to Holkar Stadium in Indore for the 3rd ODI this Sunday.
Australia made some changes after their 1st ODI loss to no avail, bringing in Ashton Agar for Adam Zampa and Kane Richardson for James Faulkner. It probably hasn’t been their bowling that has been their downfall, however, after restricting India to scores of 281 and 252, the Aussie batting lineup failed miserably on both occasions.
The experiment of Hilton Cartwright opening the batting seems to have failed, with the all-rounder scoring just one run in both games. He hasn’t bowled in either game so it’s curious as to why he would be picked in the team in front of a specialist batsman like Khawaja of Handscomb, I’d expect that to change in game three.
Virat Kohli returned to his scintillating best in game two, plundering 92 runs to steer India to a manageable score. His form spells trouble for the Aussies who were able to claim his scalp for cheap in game one but the Indians still managed 281 runs.
We said it before game two and it’s still probably the most telling facort of the series in our opinion. The fact that the Aussie bowling attack can dominate periods of the game but the Indian batting line-up is deep and talented enough to put up at least 250 runs on any given day is daunting.
Hard to imagine the Aussies restricting the Indians to under 250 again and while for some that score is chaseable, it looks like for the Aussies, their batting lineup isn’t strong enough to chase that on Indian pitches.
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Hard to pick a top batsman for the Indians, on any given day they have 6 or 7 blokes capable of turning it on. For the Aussies it’s a different story, Steve Smith looks the only Australian batsman capable of consistent play vs the spin attack of the Indians.
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While the Indian spinners have been doing the job in the middle overs, it’s been their deadly medium pace attack that has been making the early breakthroughs in games. Jasprit Bumrah has been great in both games without reward and he is a good pick to have the breakout performance here.
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