India’s start to the Australia white-ball Tour was far less than ideal. Stand-in captain Mitchell Marsh blew away India with his unbeaten 46 in a rain-curtailed game to steer Australia to a seven-wicket triumph (DLS method) at the Optus Stadium in Perth on Sunday. In the three-match series opener, rain interrupted the contest on four occasions, which didn’t help India’s cause. Australia remained disciplined throughout the chase, hardly faced any setbacks, and effortlessly hunted the paltry target.
This is India’s first defeat in ODIs in 2025, and their run of eight successive wins has come to an end with this.
Batting first, India lost three wickets for just 25 runs inside nine overs. The top 3 – Rohit Sharma (8), Shubman Gill (10) and Virat Kohli (0), failed to leave an impact.
“Yes, I mean, when you lose three wickets in the powerplay, you’re always trying to play a catch-up game (on the rain delays and the poor start). A lot of learnings for us from this game and a lot of positives for us as well. We were defending 130 and we took the game, not till the very end, but pretty deep. We were very satisfied with that. We are very fortunate (on the crowd support). The fans turned up in huge numbers and hopefully they’ll be able to cheer us on at Adelaide as well,” Shubman Gill said after the match ended.
Australian bowlers used the extra bounce on the Optus Stadium pitch to get rid of two old foes. Rohit (8), who was also playing his 500th match for India, walked in alongside new captain Shubman Gill to loud cheers from the Perth crowd, but his stay was snapped after just 14 balls.
Rohit played a sumptuous straight drive off Mitchell Starc, which offered a heady time travel back to the glory days.
But that was it for the day for the Mumbai man, as Josh Hazlewood‘s ability to find steep bounce from the quarter-length ended his tenure. The ever-rising ball kissed the sticker of Rohit’s bat and travelled to debutant Matthew Renshaw at second slip.
Kohli walked in amid even louder cheers, but the familiar ODI greatness was nowhere to be seen. In a pre-match chat, Kohli had detailed how Australia had often brought the best out of him as a batter.
But on this instance, Starc elicited the worst out of Kohli — first through a habitual prod outside the off-stump. It eventually consumed Kohli. A drive on the up off the left-arm pacer took the edge of his bat and Cooper Connolly at backward point snaffled a wonderful catch to curtail Kohli’s agonising eight-ball innings.
It was Kohli’s first duck in Australia. Now, the veterans need something substantial in the subsequent ODIs at Adelaide and Sydney to convince the powers that be of their fire for a longer journey.
With agency inputs
