Australia need 241! That’s the same total England and New Zealand made in the 2019 final.
The idea bowling on a slow pitch is to keep to your discipline and limit the damage.
Australia chose to bowl knowing the margin of error was less than zero.
They came face to face with that when Rohit Sharma was going bonkers at the start.
And they survived it because their fielding has been unreal.
Travis Head pulled off a catch that may well rival the one Kapil Dev took in 1983.
India went 97 balls without a boundary. They thought they were consolidating.
But in came Pat Cummins, dismissing Virat Kohli.
Later Mitchell Starc found reverse swing. In the knockouts he’s taken six wickets at an average of 14.
Adam Zampa saw the pitch being slow and he too took pace off, going down to 84 kph.
He gave away just one boundary in his 10 overs.
Australia sized up the conditions and responded to them perfectly.
Head and David Warner and Cummins and Zampa were saving boundaries all over the place.
The field placements were excellent too.
They had an offside sweeper out for Rohit because they guessed he would try to hit them off their lines and lengths by making room to the leg side.
They had deep third man very fine to Suryakumar Yadav because his V is behind the wicket, not in front.
This game, if they win it, and there’s still a long way to go, especially if there’s no dew, was made back in the drawing board.
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