India lost the first ODI to Australia by 66 runs.
Chasing a mammoth 375, India finished with just 308 for 6 wickets.
They were understandably rusty in the field, leaked too many runs in bowling and despite showing sparks, could not get their batting together. However there were some bright sparks too.
Hardik Pandya and Shikhar Dhawan looked in fine touch. Pandya showed a lot of heart making a stroke-filled 90 and fully justified his inclusion as a batsman ahead of Manish Pandey and Shubman Gill.
However former England captain Michael Vaughan wasn’t impressed with India’s performance. Vaughan is a staunch critic of Indian cricket team and predicted that Virat Kohli’s men will lose to Australia in all three formats of the tour which began on Friday.
Vaughan didn’t like the “old school” mentality of playing five specialist bowlers which backfired badly. “This Indian ODI team is too old school for me …. Just 5 bowling options & the batting isn’t deep enough.”
We hope that the men in blue fight back and prove Michael Vaughan wrong!
