India are playing Australia for the 2nd ODI at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium in Nagpur. Batting first India lost their first wicket on the last ball of the first over which allowed Virat Kohli to take the early charge. Indian skipper played fine innings and scored yet another century for his team.
Australia won the toss and elected to bat first and Pat Cummins opened the bowling attack for Australia while Shikhar-Rohit opened Indian innings. The bowling decision for Australia seemed to be really effective as this was the first time when Rohit Sharma has been dismissed for a duck in a home ODI.
After that Indian skipper, Virat Kohli came in and added 38 runs on the board with Shikhar Dhawan (21) for the second wicket and 37 runs with Ambati Rayudu for the third wicket.
The Indian batting looked crumbling as they had lost three early wickets in the 17 overs. Vijay Shankar (46) came to bat on number 4 for India and scored a partnership of 81 runs with Virat Kohli before getting run-out in an unfortunate way.
After the unfortunate wicket of youngster Vijay Shankar, team India’s batting crumbled again as back-to-back wickets of Kedar Jadhav (11) and Dhoni (0) forced Indian batting at the back foot. By the end of 33 overs, India scored 171 runs with a loss of 6-wickets.
Indian skipper and batting sensation Virat Kohli showed no signs of stopping as he kept going despite the happenings at the other end and notched up his 40th ODI century by hitting a boundary off Coulter-Niles delivery to the deep backward point. Virat scored 116 runs off 120 balls with the strike rate of around 96.6, he also smashed 10 boundaries in his innings.
Kohli took India’s total at 248 before getting out on the first ball of 48th over by Pat Cummins.
From 238/6, they’ve been skittled out for 250. Australia would be quite pleased with their bowling effort after Finch opted to bowl. Australia need to be at their best to chase this down. The way they play spin will most likely decide the outcome of this game.
