A clinical Australia beat India by seven wickets in a rain-curtailed first ODI in Perth on Sunday. Australia have thus taken a 1-0 lead in the three-match series, with the second ODI set to be played in Adelaide on Thursday. Intermittent rains had forced the match to be curtailed to a 26-overs-a-side affair. India batted first and were restricted to a score of 136/9, with Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Owen and Matthew Kuhnemann all taking two wickets each.
Australia captain Mitchell Marsh then finished unbeaten on 46 off 52 balls. While Arshdeep Singh raised hopes with the early dismissal of the dangerous Travis Head, Josh Philippe and then Matt Renshaw then stood strong with Marsh and saw Australia home. It was Australia’s first ODI win at the Perth Stadium.
The match marked the return of India veterans Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli to the field, with this also being the first match for the former since he was stripped of captaincy in ODIs. The pair couldn’t stick around for long, along with Gill, with India’s top three falling inside the first nine overs. Rohit was dismissed by Hazlewood in the fourth over after scoring eight runs in 14 balls.
Kohli then fell for a duck to Mitchell Starc in the seventh, being drawn into a drive and getting caught at backward point. It has to be noted that Cooper Connolly had taken a bit of a screamer to end the former India captain’s stay in the middle on a ground where he had scored his last Test century in his last appearance. Gill, who had scored a century in his first innings as Test captain earlier this year, ended up being strangled down the leg side in the ninth over by Nathan Ellis.
Gill noted that the early dismissal of the top three hurt the team. “Never easy when you lose 3 wickets in powerplay, you are always playing catch up,” said Gill in the post-match presentation ceremony.
