India vs Australia ODIs: Mitchell Starc Exposes India’s Brittle Batting Against Swing Bowling In One-Day International Series
It was by far one of India’s worst performances at home in this format, and their unsure technique whenever the white cricket ball swings was brutally laid bare by the sensational left-arm pace of Mitchell Starc.
New Delhi: The Indian One-Day International squad would like to forget the second ODI of the series against Australia at Visakhapatnam in a hurry. It was by far one of India’s worst performances at home in this format, and their unsure technique whenever the white cricket ball swings was brutally laid bare by the sensational left-arm pace of Mitchell Starc. Not just that, the same swing didn’t work for the Indian seamers and the subsequent 10-wicket walloping was something of a nightmare for skipper Rohit Sharma and coach Rahul Dravid. This was nowhere close to the kind of batting that these two would be hoping for with the time and opportunities to iron out glitches ahead of the ICC World Cup running out rapidly.
What was a bigger concern was that this was not a one-off. India’s insecurity against swing at the top of the order, especially against left-arm seam bowling, has been exposed time and again. Be it Starc or Trent Boult or Shaheen Shah Afridi, a good left-armer has been a headache over the years.
India went ahead at the series at Mumbai, but there too they had their share of issues with the Australian seamers, especially Starc, whether he went away from the right-hander, or brought the ball back into them.
Shubman Gill has been done in, twice, playing away from his body at on going across and holing out to point. On the flip side, Suryakumar Yadav has been got two successive first-ball ducks against the same bowler, caught plumb in front by the in-swinger.
Between all this, everyone else who matters in the Indian batting top-order – Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and KL Rahul – have also faced the music against the Aussie speedster. This included their win at Mumbai, where the all, barring Rahul, came to grief, and the latter’s
partnership Ravindra Jadeja was also helped by the fact that the ball stopped moving as much towards the second half of the inning.
Hardly a very comforting thought, with all these players automatic choices for India’s World Cup squad.
The preceding Test series had also shown almost the same lot struggling against finger spin, when all of the Australian spinners on display, led by Nathan Lyon, had made them look extremely pedestrian. It was a different thing that the Australian batting ended up worse than ours in the initial stages of the series, which ensured that India’s batting problems do not manifest in the result.
One more ODI against Australia to go, before all and sundry shift to the Indian Premier League. Thereafter, the Indian Future Tour Program (FTP) shows a few limited-over matches with the West Indies and Australia bracketing the Asia Cup and then the big one October, the World Cup.
It would be very optimistic to assume that the Indian batters will magically become the best exponents of handling top-class swing or spin, so the issues will remain. What remains to be seen is how many of them are able to consistently counter these challenges and make India a viable option for a World Cup that they are already expected to win.