David Warner batting right-handed, and being given leg before wicket trying to switch back to his natural side, rather summed up the muddle Australia have sunk into as the World Cup looms ever closer in India.
A 99-run hiding was administered by the hosts at Indore. It was Australia’s fifth defeat in a row, as the promising start to the South African leg of the trip recedes further into the memory.
David Warner uncharacteristically faces up right-handed, and is dismissed lbw while falling off his feet. Credit: Getty
Even then, the margin was reduced by a combination of rain and a late-order stand of 77 between Sean Abbott and Josh Hazlewood. India’s tally of 399 was their biggest ever against Australia, a brutish lesson in the skills of limited overs batting for the tourists’ youthful bowling attack.
Steve Smith, the acting captain, acknowledged the mounting tide of trouble.
“We’ve lost quite a few in a row now in Africa and then here, so I think World Cups are about peaking at the right time,” Smith said after the game. “We certainly haven’t done that at this stage. [There are] a few things we probably need to sort out, and once we get there, we know we’re a good side, so hopefully we can turn it around.”
Warner has actually been one of Australia’s most consistent performers across these matches. He has committed fully to the attack mode the team’s leaders want to see from him in the early overs – particularly since Travis Head became unavailable.
And it is true that he has plenty of capability as a right-hander, having played that way for at least one season in junior cricket and shown himself adept at switch-hitting in more recent years.
But the sight of Warner lining up right-handed for four balls to Ravichandran Ashwin – who will only make India’s World Cup squad if Axar Patel is ruled out – only added to an increasingly dispiriting pattern of moments.
“I think if Davey’s just going to sit there and bat left-handed, Ashwin is not going to miss his length too often,” Abbott said. “With the ball spinning so much, he’s got the one that goes the other way, the straighter one, and all the variations along with that. Davey just thought he had to change it up.
“He plays golf right-handed, we see how dynamic he is with his switch-hitting and stuff, so he weighed up those options. He’s done it before, he practices it in the nets, so it was like ‘oh this is different’, but Davey’s Davey, so we just let him crack on.”
There was plenty of Australian strength still on the bench in Indore. Captain Pat Cummins and Mitchell Marsh were rested, Mitchell Starc is due back for the final game of the series in Rajkot on Wednesday, and Glenn Maxwell and Ashton Agar will also be in harness for two unofficial warm-up games before the tournament proper.
Precedent exists, also, for Australian World Cup success after a pronounced losing run: five games were dropped in a row before the 2007 event in the Caribbean amid a mess of injuries and rested players, before a seasoned side found the right gears in time.
Nevertheless, Australia’s brittle performance with the bat hardly inspired confidence. This was the fifth consecutive game in which all 10 wickets were given up rather too easily. To be 8-140 on a surface where India had fallen a run short of 400 continued a sequence begun against the Proteas.
Several players had reason to question their thinking. Smith flashed hard at a wide, swinging first ball to be taken in the slips. Cameron Green followed up the concession of 103 runs with the ball by being run out when he failed to ground his bat.
Such decisions may be emblematic of the fact that 2023 has already been a highly taxing year for the team, particularly among those players who elected to go to the Indian Premier League.
Green was at his best in the latter stages of the tour of India in March, sculpting a fine first Test century in Ahmedabad. But after staying on for the IPL and then almost immediately having to go to England, he has drifted through a series of underwhelming displays, having also been interrupted by concussion in South Africa.
Never in the history of the Australian men’s side has it faced a single year in which the Ashes, Border-Gavaskar Trophy and the ODI World Cup have all been contested away from home.
So far, the team appears to have peaked at 2-0 up in the Ashes series before following a slow but inexorable slide back to earth.
While there is still time for the players to regather, particularly once the final Cup squad of 15 is finalised at the end of this week, some of the thousand-yard stares evident in Indore were redolent of a group of cricketers trying to conserve what energy they have left.
It made for quite a contrast with the blazing eyes of Shubman Gill (104), Shreyas Iyer (105) and Suriyakumar Yadav (72, 37 balls).
Together, they cut Australia’s bowlers to pieces after Smith had made the curious decision to bowl first on a dry surface that turned sharply in the evening.
That deviation was part of why Warner reverted to right-handed against Ashwin. Spinning decks will be one of many obstacles for the Australians to overcome if they are to avoid going the same way as Eddie Jones’ hapless Wallabies in France.
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