Australia v India Second T20 Report Card

Featuring Mitchell Starc costumes, non-strike rates and compostable bucketheads

Mitchell Starc Costumes
Grade: C

It’s always difficult to get too enthusiastic about random bilateral T20 internationals, so you can imagine my relief when the first of this five (5!) match series between Australia and India was washed out.

Fortunately, for the Halloween-themed second T20, Josh Hazlewood decided to show up in costume as Mitchell Starc, taking a wicket first ball. Great stuff.

Unfortunately for Josh, the DRS showed the ball soaring over the middle stump, rather than cannoning into it, completely undoing the Starc impersonation. (Also, and to a lesser extent, he was still clearly right-handed.)

Hazlewood therefore completely abandoned the entire premise of pretending to be somebody else and instead costumed up as Mr Josh Hazlewood of Bendemeer, New South Wales, taking 3/13 off a four over opening spell.

Which, to be fair to him, is pretty spooky-scary.

Non-Strike Rates
Grade: B+

Australia did not, however, have a second Hazlewood on call. So when the original finished his spell and disappeared into a puff of Ashes cotton wool, India were free to counterattack.

Unfortunately, they were 4/47 at that point. And pretty swiftly thereafter, 5/49. Oh, sure, Abhishek Sharma was sticking around with his strike rate of 180+. But he was also mostly sticking around at the non-striker’s end. Which is, by far, the least useful spot for a person with a high strike rate to stick.

No. The only people who should be sticking around at the non-striker’s end are people with low strike rates. Or, if you prefer, high non-strike rates.

Still, maybe he was concerned that spooky old Hazlewood would come back to life for a final jump scare. If that’s not justification for somehow facing just 37 balls in total despite batting through to the 19th over, I don’t know what it is.

The point is, India were bowled out for just 125, an innings that culminated in seasoned satirist Jasprit Bumrah being comically run out after taking half a run and then looking around in confusion that his batting partner seemed disinterested in even reciprocating that much.

Solid final gag to end the innings. A bit of comedy to go along with the horror - that’s the ticket to a proper box office.

Compostable Bucketheads
Grade: A

Australia’s reply can be best summed up by the fact that, after four overs, they were 0/49 and the DLS par score was sixteen. It was an onslaught that both silenced the parochial crowd, and throttled any form of comedic life out of the contest.

Worse still, after Mitch Marsh was out, the rest of the batting kind of dithered their way to the inevitable win. At one point, Bumrah was even on a hat trick, as the Australian dithering cranked properly up.

Eventually, however, they staggered past the India total with, I dunno, let’s say, four wickets and forty balls in hand.

Not much of a match, really. On the plus side, the big screen at the MCG proudly advised us that ‘Bucketheads are now fully compostable’.

A sentence as welcome as it is nonsensical.