At Gwalior during the group match of the ICC Cricket World Cup 1996 — India and the West Indies logged horns. The Gwalior deck was on the slowish side as usual but good for batting and West Indian skipper Richie Richardson won the toss and elected to bat first.
India struck early with two wickets that included the price wicket of Brian Lara, who was caught behind at the fifth ball, apparently off his pad!
The West Indian skipper Richie Richardson and the ever-steady Shivanarine Chanderpal led an excellent recovery with a partnership of 67 for the third wicket.
Then the West Indian madness showed up — with the team well-set, Richardson attempted a needless pull shot against Manoj Prabhakar and holed out to the deep. Richardson’s departure sparked the first of two West Indian collapses — curiously, both of three wickets for eight in 12 balls against good bowlers but not good deliveries.
The West Indies were bundled out for 173 and in reply, India was left reeling against the pace of Curtly Ambrose who had the stumps of Ajay Jadeja and Navjot Singh Sidhu cart-wheeling. The vociferous crowd went silent and had their heart on their mouth when Sachin Tendulkar, batting on 22, skied one towards the evening sky only to see the West Indian wicketkeeper Courtney Browne dropping a sitter.
Automatically, the West Indian chips went down and Tendulkar grew in stature to win the second consecutive Man of the Match award.
27 years later — on a slow and low Chennai deck, surrounding an army of blue, the Australian skipper Pat Cummins decided to bat first with the intent to defend later on as the deck would be tougher to chase later on the day. It was a good decision, but to back it up, the batsmen needed to put in a very good total of around 250–270.
For a team like Australia that had toured India at the start of this year and played a three-match ODI series before the start of the tournament — should have learned their lessons very well of how to exploit the conditions.
Mitchell Marsh was gone for a duck.
Australia built on — They were 74 for 1 at the time with Steve Smith and David Warner looking comfortable against the quickies and just needed to invest faith in backfoot play and astute footwork against the spinners and play the ball as much late as possible — Australia learn and adapt better than other teams, but at Chennai, they brought back the memories of West Indies at Gwalior in 1996.
Ravindra Jadeja then took all three of his wickets in the space of 2.3 overs, as Australia lost 3 for 9 and any platform built by the top-order batsmen was quickly eroded.
Nonetheless, it was Jadeja who stole the spotlight, swiftly dismissing the surprisingly pressured Steve Smith and an unusually subdued Marnus Labuschagne
Scared of getting trapped leg before wicket, Smith was consistently trying to keep his pads outside the line of Jadeja’s deliveries — that was certainly not an Australian style of batting.
Jadeja, who was bowling at a pace around 96–97 km/h and not turning it much, started to feed the apprehension of Smith — he produced a delivery a tad slower than the previous ones as the ball turned way more than usual. In his bid to negate the leg-before possibility, Smith didn’t cover the delivery which turned past his bat to dislodge the bails.
With Australia in a spot at 110 for 3 and run-rate taking a hit, Marnus Labuschagne went for an uncharacteristic sweep shot, which isn’t his forte, and the under-cutter bowled by Jadeja found a faint edge into KL Rahul’s gloves.
Alex Carey, with not much wherewithal to survive against spin, also got a skidder, which should have been negotiated with the front foot, instead the back foot was used and the India crowd came alive.
From 110 for 2, Australia slumped to 119 for 5 and there was no looking back for Indian bowlers.
Australia ended up with 199 for 9 and for the first time, no Australian batsmen have reached a fifty in the Cricket World Cup match since 1983.
The India start was shaky like the India of Gwalior 1996 and for the first time in the history of the Cricket World Cup three Indian batsmen were dismissed for ducks — the situation became critical and while batting on 12, Virat Kohli skied one which was dropped by the Delhi Franchise player Marsh — if Marsh was a Pakistani, his dropping of Virat could have been accepted because the Pakistanis are sloppy on the field but when an Australian drop such dollies it not only surprises everyone but at the same time raises doubts.
Cummins persisted with the spin of Glenn Maxwell, who consistently released the pressure from one end.
Cummins tried the Hazlewood-Zampa combination that led to the dismissal of Kohli but it was too late.
Australia frustrated themselves and their followers big time.
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