Spinners seemed dominant as they turned the tide of the match. They swept the batting order in both the teams from either side.
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Indian pitches help spinners to a great extent and there’s no doubt in it. Earlier in Test series of three all the matches were solely based on how spinners took the wickets and turned the tide of the game to either side. Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel from the Indian team, Nathan Lyon, Matthew Kuhnemann from Australian team took loads of wickets in the test series. Jadeja crossed the mark of 250 Test wickets and also in the second Test match he took 7 wickets in an inning. In One Day Internationals (ODI), earlier in the previous two matches it seemed that the pitches favoured fast bowlers, but in the third ODI the opposite has been seen.
In the third ODI between India and Australia, Spinners completely dominated the match. From the Indian side, Axar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav were seen in action. Kuldeep grabbed three important wickets of David Warner, Marcus Labuschagne and Alex Carey. Axar swept the team’s lower order by taking two wickets of Sean Abbott and Ashton Agar. On the other hand from the Australian side Adam Zampa took four crucial wickets of Shubman Gill, KL Rahul, Hardik Pandya and Ravindra Jadeja. Ashton Agar also took two important wickets, one of a man in form, Virat Kohli and Suryakumar Yadav. Australians being a tough opponent and mostly dependent on their fast bowling attack had to change their tactics against India and added spinners to their squad for the series. This helped them to a great extent.
As the match was played at the MA Chidambaram stadium which is situated in the Chennai city, it was presumed that the pitch will help the batsman from both the sides. Australia put the total of 270 runs on the board and initially it looked easy for India as they have such a formidable batting line up. But things turned out to be the opposite. Dew in the atmosphere played its part. As in the first innings of the match there wasn’t much dew but later in the second innings dew factor changed the tide of the match. Chennai’s atmosphere is warm and because of that the dew is formed. Dew generally helps the batsman as the bowlers find it difficult to bowl at the later stages of the match.
Although, Indian line up seemed formidable, it collapsed against the Australian spin bowling. Adam Zampa played the most crucial part in the Australian team as he took four very crucial wickets. He destroyed the upper batting order of the Indian team. Shubman Gill was expected to play a good inning but failed against Adam Zampa’s spin attack. KL Rahul seemed in form in the first ODI but got out by Adam Zampa. Ashton Agar took the big wicket of Virat Kohli, as he was looking good in form. He scored 54 runs but wasn’t able to continue his batting against Australian spin attack. Same went with Australian batting as well, as their wickets fell against the Indian spin attack. Both had their spin bowlers and they played their part but it was Australia’s match in the end.
