Hazlewood killed 3 top order batsmen including Indian captain Surya.Image Credit source: Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images
Team India Batting Fail: While the Indian team’s batting was a flop in the ODI series on the Australia tour, its start in the T20 series too was not good. In the first T20 match, the Indian batsmen were looking in good form but due to rain the innings could not be completed. But in the second T20, the fate of Team India’s batting was such that it could not even play the full 50 overs. In the second match of the series in Melbourne, the Indian team was all out on a paltry score of just 125 runs. In front of Australia’s pace attack, Team India returned to the pavilion 8 balls early, out of which 9 batsmen could not even reach double figures.
Indian batting failed in front of Hazlewood
In the second match of the series in Melbourne on Saturday 31st October, Team India came out to bat first and once again it had a bad start. This time, vice-captain Shubman Gill was the first batsman to be out, who was troubled by Josh Hazlewood with his inswing, out swing and bouncer and then sent back to the pavilion. But unlike the last match, this time the Indian innings could not recover and star pacer Hazlewood became the reason.
The Australian pacer completed his spell of 4 overs in the first 8 overs and gave away only 13 runs in it, sending Gill, captain Suryakumar Yadav and Tilak Verma back to the pavilion. Team India had lost 5 wickets for only 49 runs but even after this Abhishek Sharma played a stormy innings and scored his first half-century against Australia in just 23 balls. At such a time, he also got good support from Harshit Rana, who was promoted. Rana and Abhishek together made a partnership of 56 runs for the sixth wicket and somehow took the team beyond 100 runs.
9 out on single digits, score of 4 -0
The Indian innings finally collapsed for 125 runs in just 18.4 overs, in which more than half of the runs were scored by Abhishek. He played a stormy inning of 68 runs in 37 balls, while Harshit also made an important contribution of 35 runs. But apart from these, the remaining 9 batsmen were out on single digit scores. That means no one scored 10 or more. In this also, 4 batsmen – Tilak Verma, Kuldeep Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah and Varun Chakraborty, could not open their account. Australia’s pace and medium pace bowlers took 8 wickets of Team India. Apart from Hazlewood, Nathan Ellis and Xavier Bartlett took 2-2 wickets, while Marcus Stoinis also got a success.