India get by with an assist from Mitch Marsh
Day 4 from the World Cup, plus how Aiden Markram broke the World Cup record.
Can India still win games without a top order? Can Australia win the World Cup without being able to stay in against spin? Can KL Rahul play under pressure now? Will Marnus review this show? All these questions will be answered today.
Australia started slow, India moved that to an absolute stop through Ashwin, Jadeja and Kuldeep, and then Australia’s tail hung around long enough to make India chase 200. The game was over until Starc did Starc things and Hazlewood chipped in twice. India were 3 for basically none. But then Mitch Marsh should have taken a dolly off Virat Kohli. To accurately quote Steve Waugh, “Do you realise you've just cost your team the match?", which granted is not as good as the line people talk about.
But from there India handled the dewy conditions and easily chased the low total, and ended up with a tidy little net run bump. Australia is going to be heading back to the nets.
Jadeja bowling. Smith vs SLA (SAK)
Ravi Jadeja had a good day. Last two years he has started to find ODI bowling form again. But there is something else worth thinking about, Jadeja is just a lot better at home. His record at home is 30, neutral is 32, and away is 50. This tournament is at home, so we expect him to do better.
On top of that, this wicket was not just at home, but home home, Chennai. He has played 42 T20 matches here, his most by far, averaging 24 and going at less than seven runs an over. The worst hit is Australia would have known this was coming, and they still couldn’t get off the train track.
Steve Smith was now dismissed by Jadeja for the 11th time across formats in international cricket. So I thought of looking up if this is a serious problem. Before today, his batting average against left-arm orthodox bowlers in ODI cricket when we compare it to the rest of the bowling types is his second-best.
And before today, he had 222 runs off 188 deliveries of Jadeja with just 2 dismissals in the format. All-format numbers do not really tell us too much about the actual problems. They just tell us that the two have played each other 1000 times. That is not an exaggeration by the way, Smith has faced 1016 balls from Jadeja in my database.
Also, just a shout-out to all three of the spinners. I think India could have used any of their top six spinners on these pitches. But loved how Ashwin did his stuff, Kuldeep worked over Maxwell in a very nice way too.
India’s batting (JK)
When Mitch Marsh didn’t catch Virat Kohli, that was the last chance that India really gave. And from there it was all about the partnership. They handled the early pressure and then moved through the gears. After the new ball, Zampa was their second major issue, and KL Rahul dissected him. That meant the last thing that could trip India up was either a cross seam ball that did something weird, some reverse swing (though hard to do that using a bar of soap) or a soft error by the batters.
What I loved about how they went about it was how they just played within themselves knowing that Starc, or even Zampa, could take multiple wickets later on. So KL hit to the offside, and Virat to the leg. They took on the bad balls when they needed to, but they just iced the game. They could have gone for the net run rate, but that might have opened up an end, so they had as gentle a walk through the park as playing in screaming humidity against 90MPH bowlers can be.
Australia had one decent partnership and that is all they ever got. India was one entire partnership, but that was enough to win the game. India will be hoping for more going forward, and Australia will be hoping for one like this next game.
The conditions help (JK)
This game is really interesting when you break it down. The Indian seamers looked really good up front, but the ball wasn’t doing all that much for them, so the spinners were brought on, and that is how they won the game.
Australia bowled under completely different conditions. The ball did a lot for their seamers, and not just laterally, it even went up and down. But for their spinners, it skidded on. Hard to have a puff of dust with moisture on the wicket. It was probably better for finger spinners as well, and Australia only had one which is more of a part-time option.
There were still chances for Australia, but with a smaller chase, it made it trickier. Outside of the fact that Zampa didn’t get assistance, I would say the bowling conditions each had were almost ideal for them. But Australia couldn’t crack the Indian partnership after Mitch Marsh tried to catch a ball with his nuts. And maybe Hazlewood could have bowled an extra over, they didn’t need to try Maxwell as early. But really, hard to blame the bowlers on a 200 chase.
The Indian Middle Overs Choke (BQ)
After Kuldeep Yadav had David Warner caught and bowled, the runs dried up for Australia, such that not a single boundary was scored for 73 deliveries, from the middle of the 20th over to the end of the 32nd.
Half of these overs were bowled by Ravindra Jadeja ofcourse, who effectively broke Australia's back by accounting for the wickets of Marnus Labuschagne and Alex Carey, in addition to Steven Smith.
The Australians would have expected Chennai to be dry, but being choked in Chepauk would not have been on their planned itinerary. Talk about a tight squeeze.
Australia v spin (JK)
Ashwin came on for the eighth over, and with that, the first ball was fairly timid and slid onto Warner’s bat. The next one bounces up, but nothing special. The third one bounces again but from a shorter length. And then the fourth, this spits, we saw a cloud of dust. We also saw Smith’s reaction.
At this point, my JarrodViz ratings went from Australia to have a decent chance of winning dropped to a position where I didn’t think they could make 250.
It’s not just I don’t think Australia can play spin well - though more on that later - it’s that I think they are poor when the spin is holding up, bouncing, or doing anything not normal. The way they think changes.
But, maybe I am wrong. Because I found this.
This is Australia vs South Africa in that ODI series just before this tournament. You can see just how bad Australia struggled with the South African spinners on wickets that don’t assist anywhere near as much.
And so I looked just at their best spinners, there was an even more interesting pattern. Because it was the wickets that seemed to be their bigger issue, they could score off good spinners, but not without taking risks that cost them.
However, that was not a full-strength team. I think random guys they found in the back of the MCG nets were getting games at one point, so what about over a long period, like say, since the last World Cup?
And you look at this and you see it straight away, yes Australia scores at the fourth-highest rate against the spinners, but they do it by having the eighth-best average. They can score okay, but it costs them.
So I looked at one last thing, how they score.
This actually looks a lot like the last graph, but there are a few differences. This is how often teams score boundaries against spin, compared to how often they score singles. Australia is the fourth-best with boundaries, but not only are they the eighth-best scoring singles, but you can see they are such a distance back from the other genuine World Cup hopes. There is little doubt of the teams with a chance, Australia play spin the worst.
There are two bulging caveats here. One is Australia has rarely played their best lineups in this time, so these numbers may look more accurate now. But they were playing India on Chepauk. And also when I looked at all these numbers in Asia, Australia’s record is not worse there than outside. But South Africa really have struggled against spin in this period when in Asia, but it’s from a teeny tiny sample.
Does all this mean Australia can’t win the World Cup? No, they should qualify by winning around 5 or 6 games even after this. But in the final two games, they are going to need pitches that are better for batting than spin. And so far in this tournament, we have had pitches way better for the tweakers than the men with the bats.
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