AUS vs IND | 1st T20: Jadeja, his substitute Chahal hand India winning momentum

India defeated Australia by 11 runs on the back of a strong bowling performance in Canberra to take a 1-0 lead in the three-match series. Chasing a modest total of 162 runs, the hosts were off to a decent start with both openers D’arcy Short and Aaron Finch looking to maximise the powerplay overs. On the contrary, Indian openers were off to a sluggish start as both KL Rahul and Shikhar Dhawan struggled to find boundaries at the start of the innings.

When Virat Kohli dropped Short in the seventh over, it looked like the ghosts of the ODI series would come back to haunt the Men in Blue. But in a crucial development, Yuzvendra Chahal got into the game as a concussion substitute after Ravindra Jadeja got hit on the head by a Mitchell Starc bouncer in the final over of India's innings.

Chahal was on the money straight away as he lured Aaron Finch into a big shot with his typical floaty leg-spinning delivery outside the line of his stumps. Finch could not time the ball and Pandya made sure that the catch-dropping spree of the team ended right there.

Virat Kohli, who captained both Chahal and Washington Sundar in the IPL, was aware of the challenges the spinning duo could pose to the Aussie batting line up and he tried to squeeze the Aussie batsmen to bring about a surge in the required rate. Sundar, Chahal, and Natarajan bowled immaculate lengths to deny Australia any sense of momentum in the middle overs as the hosts could hit only one boundary in the overs between seven to 12th.

Chahal’s impact on the game was telling as he finished with three wickets at the end of his four-over quota and he justified the irritation that Australian head coach Justin Langer felt when the match referee David Boon informed him about India bringing him in to replace Jadeja, in between the innings.

If Pandya’s catch to dismiss Finch was good, Samson sprinted from deep-midwicket position and dived forward to take a stunner to see the back of Steve Smith, who was looking ominous after hitting a six off Deepak Chahar when the pacer missed the length on a slower short ball.

T Natarajan has been on an unforgettable tour and he is yet to set a foot wrong. On the day when India did not have a huge score to defend and an assault from Maxwell could have seen them lose the game, he cut back a delivery from the line of the stumps to find Maxwell trapped inside the crease and in front of the stumps. The review showed the ball would have crashed into the stumps and with that, India were well and truly back into the game as the required rate was touching 10 runs per over.

Needing 58 runs from 36 balls, Short, who could manage only 32 runs off 35 balls till then and was playing an uncharacteristic inning, had to go big on virtually every ball and Natarajan was smart enough to deny him the perfect bounce and pace by bowling a cross-seam delivery that the left-hander failed to time and Pandya was waiting patiently at the long-on boundary to send him back to the pavilion.

With the fall of Short, there was no room left for taking time to settle for the Aussie batsmen. Kohli assigned the task of holding them back to his spin twins in the form of Chahal and Sundar. Sundar denied both Henriques and Matthew Wade lengths to get under the ball and conceded only three runs in that over.

With 46 needed off the last 24 balls, Henriques and Wade had to go against whoever came in to the attack and Chahal was smart enough with his loopy deliveries that kept on going away from their eye lines. Ultimately, Wade was found wanting on a wrong’un that kept on turning away from his off stump and a mistimed slog sweep found Kohli at the midwicket boundary who had stationed himself perfectly for that shot, which is considered as Wade’s go-to shot when under pressure.

The match looked out of the hosts’ reach and any chance of them coming back in the game was settled when Henriques was trapped in front of the stumps by Chahar. Chahar assumed the batsman had hit the ball and did not appeal but KL Rahul was aware of the opportunity from behind the stumps as the umpire Rod Tucker acceded to his appeal and put his finger up to send Henriques and, with him, Australia’s chances of winning the game back to the pavilion.

When Natarajan bowled Starc through the type of searing yorker that has brought him into the T20I and ODI squad in the first place, it was more or less India’s game to lose. Virat Kohli and his men made sure there were no goof ups to let the game slip away from their hands.

Earlier, Australian captain Aaron Finch won the toss and had invited Virat Kohli to unleash what he had to offer on a pitch that had supported pace and bounce in the last game. Surprisingly enough, the ball did swing and Starc was the first one to extract it out of the air and sent Dhawan packing with a jaffa that swung late to uproot his off stump. Both him and Rahul had batted slowly in the first two overs to settle down and his wicket derailed the momentum even before the team could get some.

Virat Kohli tried to improve the scoring rate with a handful of strokes but a long hop from leg spinner Mitchell Swepson found him out of shape in desperation to make full use of the bad delivery and, in the end, he could only chip it straight back to the bowler. After Kohli’s wicket, Sanju Samson, who was trusted to play, despite the presence of another wicketkeeper-batsman, Rahul, in the playing XI, looked on a mission to justify his place as he hit some eye-catching strokes before finding the fielder at the cover position.

Samson stayed at the crease for a short period of time, but his cameo allowed Rahul, who was shaping in to play a big one like he was doing in the IPL, to get away with the momentum. India were set to run away with the flow but the fall of Samson followed Rahul’s wicket who looked he was searching for boundaries in the middle overs and the wrist-spinning duo of Zampa and Swepson had denied him any chance to cut loose. In the middle overs, Australia squeezed Indian batsmen so much that they could score only 18 runs for the loss of three wickets in the overs 11-16.

Manish Pandey, too, disappointed and went back cheaply and his wicket brought the pair of Jadeja and Pandya back to the batting crease after they had unleashed mayhem against the hosts in the last ODI, played at the same ground. Today though, the situation was different, and Pandya could not replicate his hard-hitting form and perished. This left Jadeja needing to bring on the heroics in the end all alone.

He was up to the task and started his onslaught in the 19th over, bowled by Josh Hazlewood and took him for 23 runs. He hurt his hamstring after the third ball and when he stood back on his feet, the left-hander deposited a delivery from the bowler for a humongous six, followed by two fours, to take away the momentum from the hosts.

Mitchell Starc looked like coming back into his rhythm as he was finding his yorkers yet again. One short ball found the helmet of Jadeja that allowed India to bring Chahal for bowling as the all-rounder failed the concussion test.

India and Virat Kohli will be relieved on getting off to a winning start in the three-match T20 series after batsmen were failing to make big runs at the start. Jadeja with the bat brought them back in the game and bowlers made sure that a modest total was made to look insurmountable. But both skipper Kohli and the team would be wary of similar batting performances as the teams will now travel back to Sydney where they were annihilated while bowling and batsmen had failed to match up to the firepower of the hosts.

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