Chennai : So which team benefitted and which suffered from the rain interruption during the series opener in Chennai on Sunday? It’s difficult to tell with certainty, for even the two participating sides have conflicting views about it. While the Australian skipper Steve Smith felt the rain-forced changes in the contest — their innings was reduced to 21 overs and the target was revised to 164 from 282 — put them at a disadvantage, India’s spinner Yuzvendra Chahal countered him saying the hosts were affected more by the rain and its consequences.
In the times of T20 cricket where totals in excess of 200 are scored and chased without much fuss, 164 from 21 overs should have been a walk in the park.
Turned out it wasn’t, and the Australian skipper tried to explain their failure by pointing out that the two new balls from both ends, which is not the case in a T20 match, made the task tougher than it appeared to be.
“I think 160 with one new ball would have made things a lot easier,” said Smith. “It was a new-ball wicket, as we saw throughout the whole game. We took wickets with the new ball, they found it quite hard, and it was the same for us.”
Chahal, however, thought that bowling 21 overs with two new balls was a disadvantage to them, not the Australians. “If they had won, they would have said that two new balls was a positive as the ball came nicely on to the bat,” said the leg-spinner. “Our minus point was that we had to bowl 10 overs each with a new ball,” he said, perhaps alluding to the fact that the spinners generally struggle to bowl with the new ball. Listing another inconvenience the hosts faced, the diminutive leg-spinner said: “Australia had an advantage because the (fielding restriction) rule was not for a 20-over game and the extra fielder was always in the inner circle. It’s just that we bowled well and didn’t allow them to get back into the game.” For Smith, adjusting mentally to scoring eight runs an over, rather than under six as per the original target, wasn’t easy and made them rush a little. “When you’re playing 20 overs, you don’t really have a great deal of time to make things up when you need eight runs an over from ball one. It was difficult in that aspect.”