Australia v India First T20 Report Card

Featuring heptapods, Cliff Richard, recrownings and batting out your overs

Heptapods
Grade: D

With the Australian men’s T20 cricket side, held together by chewing gum and old Shane Watson guitar strings, stinking up the joint over in the men’s T20 World Cup, it felt like a perfect opportunity for the good Australian T20 team to spring into action.

By which I mean, of course, the Australian women’s T20 cricket side, led for the first time by Sophie Molineux. A new captain, a new era. Or, to be more precise, a Molineux captain and a Molineux era.

This T20 series was to be against India as the first leg of a multi-format series. Look, I don’t mind the multi-format series, but something needs to be done about the number of legs in them. Seven legs is a crime against nature, surely? Where do you see heptapods in real life? Yes, a spider who has lost a leg due to injury or an email prank-based comic premise, perhaps. But nothing that isn’t of an artificial nature.

Come on, folks. Let’s add a second Test in there and have a proper octopod structure. Spray the players with ink if you have to. End the series with a screening of Eight Legged Freaks. Whatever you need to do. But let’s get it done.

Cliff Richard
Grade: B-

The series began with national anthems, the Australian version of which was a magnificent display of a singer missing her starting point and never recovering. Consistently behind the music, with the players stifling their laughter as they tried to determine whether they should sing along with the microphoned singer or the underlying music.

Great stuff. A proper start to the series. Although perhaps a harbinger of the possibility that Australia’s batters might, too, struggle with timing.

Not initially, however, with Georgia Voll going on the attack early. Before we knew it, we’d (to paraphrase Cliff Richard) got ourselves a driving, tonking, sweeping, cutting Georgia Voll.

But Beth Mooney’s timing was no good, and she was soon caught skying one to cover. Voll, too, succumbed, a more standard caught behind dismissal as she tried to cut a Kranti Gaud delivery that jagged back in too close to her body.

With Phoebe Litchfield also struggling to find timing, playing out a maiden off Renuka Singh, the veteran Elllyse Perry suddenly decided to smack consecutive boundaries off Shreyanka Patil.

Enough of this maiden bullshit, was Pez’s thinking. And fair enough too. That’s experience.

Recrownings
Grade: D

Litchfield followed Perry’s lead and started switch-hitting all over the place (more like Phoebe SWITCHfield, amirite?) as Australia began to accelerate.

But Perry soon fell, caught well by a diving Harmanpreet Kaur. Ash Gardner came and went, and then Litchfield top edged a simple catch to the keeper. Suddenly, Australia were 5/84 after 9.1 overs.

Now, I’d hate to be accused of mansplaining, but at this point, if I were the Australian women’s cricket team, I would simply have stopped losing wickets.

I am not, however, the Australian women’s cricket team. And so, after a brief respite as Georgia Wareham and Nicola Carey added 41 runs in 28 balls, they suddenly reverted to mistiming catches straight to India fielders.

Perhaps they were emboldened by having newly crowned Belinda Clark Award winner Annabel Sutherland coming in at eight. If so, that was a mistake. For one thing, she wasn’t newly crowned - she’d won the same award the previous year. So this was a recrowning, if anything. Also, the Belinda Clark Award winner doesn’t get a crown. You’re thinking of Crown Casino, where the ceremony used to be held before Cricket Australia decided to mostly do it over WhatsApp. And finally, of course, Sutherland could only make 3 (6), before being smartly stumped by Richa Ghosh.

Any time that previously mentioned good Australian T20 side wanted to spring into action was fine by me.

Batting Out Your Overs
Grade: B+

Instead Molineux was left as the last woman standing, as Australia crashed to 133 all out after eighteen overs.

This turned out to be careless on multiple levels. For one thing, it was 133 all out, not a good score by any measure.

More importantly, it meant that Australia failed to bat out their final two overs. Now, ordinarily, the idea that ‘you must always bat out your overs’ is recognised these days as kind of peak Richie Benaud-era Channel Nine coverage sloppy thinking. Not batting out your overs is not always the optimal path. If you’re 8/127 with a handful of overs remaining, pottering your way safely to 8/140 from the full complement of overs is not, in itself, an optimal solution. If you bat more riskily and thrash your way to 150 and are bowled out with still two overs left, then that’s a definitively ten runs better outcome. The key, as with all white ball first innings batting, is finding the correct balance that maximises your final score. That might not always involve batting out your overs.

In this case, however? Australia lost their last two overs. Which is relevant because in India’s reply, the match-ending rain showed up after 5.1 overs. India, having belted their way to 1/50 primarily on the back of some Shafali Verma power hitting, therefore won comfortably on DLS, the result being made official by one ball.

Bat two overs longer, Australia, and the rain would have arrived in time to save you. Instead, India take an early 2-0 lead.

Still, losing first up to India after clean sweeping the Ashes 16-0 last summer feels like an unnecessarily cruel belated jab at the England side.

So, on that basis, I’m okay with it.