Chennai
A rain-curtailed match loses what’s essentially the essence of a contest — an equal chance to succeed or fail. The curtailed contest becomes unfair in several ways. Which team suffers more depends on when the rain interrupts, and for how long. On Sunday, a steady drizzle delayed the start of the second innings long enough to force the officials to reduce the second innings to 21 overs, and revise the 282-run target set by India to 164. Which team benefitted from this forced change may be a matter of debate, but there can’t be two views about the fact that the game would have played differently, not necessarily the result, had rain not intervened.

As the show must go on, the match did go on, and India managed to beat Australia by 26 runs to get off to a winning start in the five-match series. The Australians, possibly because of the reduced overs, looked a little rushed, and Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya made the most of it by dealing three quick blows to rattle them. The dangerous Glenn Maxwell went after Kuldeep Yadav and threatened to turn the game around with a flurry of sixes and boundaries in his 18-ball 39, but Yuzvendra Chahal, the other wrist spinner, had him caught at long-on before he could inflict more damage. With Maxwell went much of Australia’s hope of pulling off a win. Eventually, the Aussies were restricted to 137/9, with the two wrist spinners picking five wickets between them.

For India, there were quite a few bright spots in the game that began on a rather gloomy note for them. In the blink of an eye, they were down to 11/3, and then 87/5 in the 22nd over. It’s quite an achievement to recover from the almost hopeless situation and post a total that gave them an even chance in the contest, even if the match had run its full course. The fantastic recovery was scripted by Dhoni’s patient 79, and Pandya’s smashing 66-ball 83. While Dhoni yet again showed his maturity and unflappable mindset through his knock and the two important partnerships he shared with Pandya (118) and Bhuvneshwar Kumar (72), Pandya showed he, too, can knuckle down if the situation demands before bringing out those monstrous hits. Sensing that India couldn’t afford to lose another wicket, he and Dhoni took a slow and steady route to build a partnership. And when he felt the team needed quick runs, he exploded, smashing three sixes and a four off Adam Zampa in the 36th over. And when he perished looking for quick runs, Dhoni stitched another fruitful partnership with Kumar, giving India the total that looked way beyond their reach for much of their innings. In the process, he completed his 100th international half-century as well — 66 in ODIs, 33 in Tests and one in T20Is.

Earlier, Australia’s new-ball pair of Pat Cummins and Nathan Coulter-Nile grabbed the opportunity to bowl in overcast conditions with both hands — they bowled full and wide at good pace, got the ball to swing a bit, and lured the top-order batsmen into making fatal errors. While Ajinkya Rahane, opening the innings in the absence of Shikhar Dhawan, and Manish Pandey were caught behind and in the slips, respectively, skipper Virat Kohli’s attempted on-the-up drive ended in Maxwell’s outstretched hand at backward point. Just like the Test series earlier this year, the ODI series started with a duck for the Indian captain. But unlike the Test series opener, India ended up winning the first ODI of the series.