Australia chased down the fifth-highest target in ODIs on Sunday in Mohali, probably their favourite ground in India having won some memorable matches including the 1996 World Cup semi-final against West Indies and the thrilling chase in the third ODI of the 2013 series. That chase of 304 was engineered by James Faulkner, and more than five years later, Ashton Turner stunned Virat Kohli‘s men who also had to battle the dew in addition to several muffed chances in the field. While reviewing the defeat, Kohli said towards the end of the post-match presentation that DRS “was not consistent at all” and that a review that didn’t go India’s way was a “game-changer” moment. Here’s what all he said at the presentation:
On what went wrong
“The wicket remained good throughout. We’ve been on the wrong side of the dew twice in two games, but that’s not an excuse. Especially with five down, giving 10 runs an over in the end was a bit of a harsh pill to swallow, but, look, it was very difficult to bowl in the end. The guys tried their best, but Ashton played a hell of a knock. [Peter] Handscomb played a really good innings too, to hold the innings together. [Usman] Khawaja was good again, but I think Ashton was the gamechanger.”
If he took dew into account while opting to bat
“[In the] last game we were told there was going to be dew, we were on the wrong side of that. We had a good wicket to bat on, [and] Australia would have done the same. So, again they just played better again in the second innings, and that’s something you just have to accept. It’s a record chase for them and they deserved to win in the end. So we wanted to bat first anyway. It was never a confusion in our minds, we wanted to bat first anyway.”
On delaying the introduction of Yuzvendra Chahal (the legspinner came on to bowl after 19 overs when Australia were 105 for 2)
“We had to get the fifth bowler out of the way. If Kedar [Jadhav] and Vijay [Shankar] were bowling with the dew, it was going to be even more difficult. It was always going to be tough for the bowlers who are not specialist bowlers, so we wanted to get the 10 overs out of the way first. We backed Chahal to bowl. He is a wristspinner and they go get some purchase off the pitch. But in the end, you can see it even standing now, it became too wet to bowl and just those last three-four overs for everyone was the difficult part. I think the first part of the bowling was fine, and they did a pretty good job. But in the end they were going pretty hard, and it was difficult to bowl in the right areas.”
On how damaging the fielding goof-ups were
“Yeah, crucial. We were sloppy in the field. We were not at our best, and we should have grabbed those chances and made the most of the opportunity when it came by. But the DRS call (when Turner was ruled not out on review for a caught behind when he was on 41 and Australia still needed 66 from 39 deliveries) as well, was a bit of a surprise for all of us. It’s becoming more of a talking point every game. It’s just not consistent at all, and that was a game-changer moment as well. But yeah, that’s more of an uncontrollable, but the controllable we had to do right, and we didn’t do it right, and the opportunity slipped away.”
Source: ESPN Crickinfo