India scored 136-9 in the first ODI of the three-match series against Australia in Perth, but the DLS-revised target for the hosts was reduced to 131 in 26 overs. Here's how Australia's tactical masterclass played a role in that.
India’s innings interrupted by multiple rain-breaks
Australia put India into bat after winning the toss and got off to a flyer with the ball. The much-awaited return of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli didn’t go to plan as both were caught behind the wicket for 8 and 0 off the bowling of Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc respectively.
Shubman Gill was then caught down the leg side in the ninth over, when the first rain break came. It lasted long enough to reduce the match to a 49-overs-a-side contest. But the second break was a much longer one, lasting close to two hours and shortening the game to 35 overs each.
A third break less than three overs later reduced the game to 32 overs, before the fourth and final one brought it down to 26. Amidst the frequent interruptions, India recovered from 45-4 to finish on 136-9 courtesy of cameos from KL Rahul (38 off 31) and Nitish Kumar Reddy (19 off 11). But Australia’s DLS-revised target was brought down to 131, instead of moving up as is usually the case in such games for the chasing side.
Also read: Explained: What the markers between the wide lines and stumps are for
Why was Australia’s DLS-revised target reduced?
The DLS system takes into account resources available to each side when calculating revised scores in shortened matches. Resources are a combination of number of overs and number of wickets a team has.
When an interruption occurs and the length of the match is reduced, teams lose some of their resources. The loss in resources depends on the number of overs lost in the game, the stage of the innings when the interruption occurred and the number of wickets in hand at the time of interruption.
For example, overs lost towards the end of the first innings would impact the team batting first more than if the overs were lost at the beginning, in which case they would have the luxury of planning the rest of their innings accordingly. In this case, DLS revised-targets would usually be higher than the actual targets.
However, if the team batting first have already lost a major chunk of their wickets when the interruption(s) occurred, as India had today, the effect would be reversed.
A shortened game after the team is 45-4 in 13.2 overs, as India were, would suit the batting side as it would allow them to go big in the remaining overs in order to maximise their total, without having to worry about the lack of wickets in hand. That is what India’s lower middle order did, with Rahul, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, and NKR effectively going hard from ball one and adding up 84 runs in the 9.2 overs after the last rain break.
They wouldn’t have had this luxury if they had to bat 50 overs and might have been bowled out sooner in that case. On the other hand, interruptions like this deny the chasing team the comfort of chasing what could have been a low target in their full quota of 50 overs.
To offset this imbalance of lost resources, Australia’s DLS target was reduced from 137 to 131.
How did Australia help their own cause?
In an innings of 26 overs, four bowlers would usually be allowed to bowl five overs each and one bowler could bowl six, with the idea being that no single bowler can bowl equal to or more than 25 per cent of the total overs.
Since Australia’s chase started with the knowledge that the innings would last 26 overs, this is the restriction Indian bowlers had to follow. But in the first innings, Mitchell Starc (6-1-22-1) and Josh Hazlewood (7-2-20-2) combined to bowl 13 overs, totalling up to 50 per cent of 26 overs.
This was made possible due to Mitchell Marsh’s call to bowl his two strike bowlers out up front.
When the second rain break reduced the match to 35 overs, Hazlewood had already bowled six out of the first 12 that had been sent down, while Starc had bowled five. With a cap of seven overs per bowler at that point, Marsh had one more over of Hazlewood and two overs of Starc up his sleeve.
Instead of holding them back for the death, he gave Hazlewood his seventh on the trot and the star seamer responded with the wicket of Shreyas Iyer in the 14th over as India slipped to 45-4. After the next break reduced the match to 32 overs, Marsh immediately brought Starc on to bowl his sixth in an attempt to kill the game right there. Starc conceded two runs in a quiet over as India went into the fourth interruption at the score of 50-4.
Australia’s ultra-aggressive tactics with the ball helped them on two fronts:
- it allowed them to use their strike bowlers for a higher percentage of overs than is usually allowed.
- it helped them take at least one extra wicket (that of Iyer) before the break and kept the scoring down, which eventually resulted in a lower DLS-revised target.
Eventually, they chased the revised target down with ease, with seven wickets and five overs remaining.
1st ODI, Australia vs India
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