At the outset, it seems only fair – even mandatory – to point out that Australia’s ODI side are awesome, or at some level even beyond that. That seems an obvious thing to say for a side that are current world champions as well as the top-ranked ODI side (by a distance).
They have won a staggering 25 out of 31 ODIs since October 2014 and lost only four. Of those four losses, one has been by a wicket and two by just three wickets. In other words, even those games they have lost, they have only just lost them.
If you were to draw up a dream batting order for ODI cricket, you would have to draw heavily from Australia’s. David Warner at the top, Glenn Maxwell, James Faulkner and the potential of Mitchell Marsh in the middle and lower-middle.
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And there is the captain Steve Smith, currently in such a run of form that he alone stands as the firmest rebuke to the ICC’s rankings system.
Since October 2014, he has five hundreds and nine fifties in 28 innings. The longest he has gone without a fifty in this stretch is three innings. He averages more than 61, has a strike rate of nearly 91 and finds himself ... at No 20 in the ICC’s ODI batsmen rankings.
Collectively, it is, in many ways, a batting order that best distils the modern batting ethos, at least better than any other side.
This has not been a series for bowlers, yet it is testament to Australia’s depth that newbies and second-stringers have contributed to a winning series: it is unimaginable in most countries. As they have not had a poor fielding side since Bob Simpson and Allan Border transformed them in 1987, it would be foolish to expect their fielding to ever be anything less than brilliant.
So for India to lose this series is to acknowledge the quality of the opponents they were facing. Sometimes that is enough and it is easy to see a few other countries losing in Australia like this.
A parallel truth, however, is also that India have not helped themselves. To concede 310, 309, 296 (and given Australia had seven balls left when completing the chase, that is effectively 300-plus) and 348 is to lay the blame primarily on the bowlers.
Somewhat in their defence the pitches have been typical of those that proliferate the world of 50-overs cricket today. But none of India’s faster bowlers have been able to maintain any kind of discipline, too often following bright bursts with dirge, in one over.
That could be read as a career summary for both Umesh Yadav and Ishant Sharma.
Leaving Ravichandran Ashwin out after the first two ODIs is also tactically questionable.
Granted he was too easily bullied around in both those games, but for a spinner so celebrated not one month ago to be dropped this swiftly, even if questions of his effectiveness away from India remain.
The case that India were striving for better balance without him can be made, but there is no reasonable answer to this question: why drop your best bowler in the first place?
On the surface it would be ridiculous to criticise India’s batting: they, after all, have crossed 300 as many times as Australia have in the series. Their batsmen have made five hundreds compared to Australia’s three.
But it is in the smaller details that India’s batting has floundered. For a start, the sense that the batting is a collective has been absent. Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli have been outstanding. Beyond them, Shikhar Dhawan has taken crucial time to start scoring and Ajinkya Rahane has been valuable. Beyond that, is barren land.
There is no better encapsulation of this than the fourth ODI in Canberra on Wednesday. India’s top three took them to the brink of chasing 349. Once they were out, though, the rest mustered up a collapse of nine for 46. Australia, meanwhile, had solid to spectacular contributions but contributions nonetheless from each of their top five.
There is also, as Sidharth Monga pointed out in analysis on ESPNcricinfo, an adjustment they need to make to the new fielding restrictions. With no batting Powerplay and five fielders allowed outside the circle in the last 10 overs, the days of batting mayhem in the last 15 overs are gone.
Instead it is from overs 30-40, when four fielders are outside the circle that batsmen must attack. India have added 60, 67, 67 and 55 in those overs in the four games so far, which is reasonable.
But to account for the extra runs their bowlers and fielders ship, it is this phase, when a pair has usually been set, that they have needed to treat as a Powerplay and eke out an extra 25-30 runs.
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