Shubman Gill made his debut as the ODI captain of the India national cricket team in the first game of the three-match series against the Australia national cricket team on Sunday, 19 October.
The high-octane match between the India national cricket team led by Shubman Gill and the Australia national cricket team led by Mitchell Marsh was held at the Perth Stadium.
Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli failed in the comeback match!
Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma’s return to international cricket was sour as both were unable to perform well in difficult batting conditions.
Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli have become single-format players after retiring from Test and T20I cricket, and will play only in 50-over matches, which are rarely played these days.
Kohli and Rohit worked really hard on their fitness and batting ahead of the Australia tour and this development was confirmed by Dinesh Karthik and Abhishek Nair.
Rohit lost 8-10 kg to get in top shape, while Kohli worked on his body during his time away from competitive cricket action to ensure that he retains the tag of the ‘fittest cricketer’.
When the great batsman of modern times landed in Perth, he immediately practiced in the nets to ensure that he acclimatised himself to the Australian conditions ahead of the series.
Kohli looked very sharp in the first net session itself. It didn’t look like he was away from the game for very long, and he placed his shots into the nets with perfection.
However, that was not the case with Rohit Sharma, who looked poor on the pitch initially. He didn’t look very good in the beginning, but after some time in the middle, he found his rhythm and started looking good.
Meanwhile, the batting stalwarts’ training and hard work went in vain as they both failed to score in the opening match of the ODI series. Rohit Sharma returned after scoring 8 runs in 14 balls, while Virat Kohli was out for zero.
On the fourth ball of the fourth over, Rohit edged Josh Hazlewood’s delivery to Matt Renshaw, while Virat Kohli played a drive to Cooper Connolly off Mitchell Starc’s delivery.
When you lose three wickets in the powerplay, you always try to play the catch-up game – Shubman Gill
India, batting, could only muster 136/9 runs on the board and Australia were given a target of 131 runs to chase in the 26-overs-per-side contest. The Mitchell Marsh-led team chased the target with 29 balls to spare and won the match by 7 wickets.
Speaking during the post-match presentation ceremony, Shubman Gill blamed himself, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli for India’s poor performance with the bat. He said:
“When you lose three wickets in the powerplay, you are always trying to play a catch-up game (due to the rain delay and poor start). There were a lot of learnings for us from this game and a lot of positives for us as well.”
We were very satisfied with it-Shubman Gill
Shubman Gill further said that he was quite satisfied with the way the bowlers performed while chasing a small score and thanked the Indian fans for coming in large numbers. He said:
“We were defending 130 and we took the game, not till the very end, but deep. We were very satisfied with that.
“We’re very fortunate (in terms of crowd support). The fans came in great numbers and hopefully they’ll be able to cheer us on in Adelaide as well.”
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