Australia executed plans with cerebral precision on their way to their sixth World Cup title victory ©Getty
As Australia finished their practice session on the eve of the World Cup final at around 4.30 pm on Saturday (November 18), there was one Indian occupying the think-tank’s attention more than anyone else. No, it wasn’t Virat Kohli or Rohit Sharma. It wasn’t even the deadly pace duo of Jasprit Bumrah or Mohammed Shami. The opposition player being discussed the most instead was Shreyas Iyer.
The Mumbai right-hander was coming off back-to-back centuries against the Netherlands and then New Zealand in the semi-final. Both those tons had also come off 60 and 70 deliveries respectively. And the Australians had decided that while Kohli was the highest run-getter for India in the tournament, apart from being a historic thorn in their side, the match-changing damage would come from Iyer.
He was the one they needed to eliminate early, not just because he was a dangerous threat, but also because that would change the dynamic of the Indian middle-order. The idea was to make sure that they get Kohli and KL Rahul batting together as early as possible, more so due to the dry and drab nature of the pitch at the Narendra Modi Stadium. That outcome, they believed, would ensure that India struggle to get to their customarily gargantuan total like they had in the tournament before, especially with Ravindra Jadeja and Suryakumar Yadav not having had much of a hit in the weeks leading up to the final. The perfect ploy to expose and exploit India’s only real issue of note leading into the big game.
Even Andrew McDonald and his highly experienced and shrewd coaching staff would not have expected the plan to be executed with this cerebral precision. For, just like the ideal scenario that they’d drawn up in the war room, the Australian bowlers led by captain Pat Cummins, and a freak catch from Travis Head, had ensured that Kohli and Rahul were batting together on the sluggish surface by the 11th over.
As it turned out, Cummins needed only one delivery to get rid of Iyer. But It’s the intensity in the captain’s body language before he ran in to bowl, as he moved his fielders around rather animatedly, that set the wicket up.
It was Cummins’s first delivery to Iyer. The field couldn’t have been set more obviously to telegraph a short ball. Four fielders on the boundary, all behind square, two each on the off and on side. Three in-fielders on the leg-side including a square-leg and mid-on but no mid-off. The cover fielder too meanwhile was in a catching position, closer to the batter than the 30-yard circle.
Understandably, Iyer’s weight remained on the backfoot, as he stayed rooted to his crease and more on-side than usual. It meant that he was in an awkward position to counter the length delivery on off-stump from the Australian captain, which always has that shape into the right-hander, and resulted in him pushing at it down the wrong line and getting an outside-edge through to the wicket-keeper. The plan had worked. The threat had been diffused without any damage. And the celebration from Cummins was a giveaway of how dependent Australia’s tactic to strangle India was on Iyer’s early dismissal.
Iyer had only managed 4 runs, courtesy a boundary off Glenn Maxwell off the last ball of the first powerplay. That would be the last boundary India would score for 98 deliveries. Just like McDonald and his team had envisaged, all Kohli and Rahul seemed content to do with the pitch slowing down further with every over, and the lack of in-form batters to come, was nudge and nurdle and keep the score ticking along. Australia had already won the first few rounds of this heavyweight contest. Then came the collateral damage that they’d then foreseen.
With the scoring rate having dropped to nothing more than a canter, and Rahul taking his time to build his innings, Kohli could no longer play the role that he’d played so magnificently till this point in the World Cup. The onus for once was on him to take the game by force and take on the Australian bowlers. And literally his first effort to do so, as he tried pushing a length delivery slightly away from his body from Cummins ended up with him inside-edging on to his stumps. Even if he had still used his class to get himself to a half-century. Another big moment of the final had already gone Australia’s way resoundingly.
Australia had if anything already drawn first blood at the toss itself. The strong position they’d got into with the Kohli wicket was only possible due to Cummins’s bold call of putting India to bat, what they’ve wanted to do throughout the tournament. So much so that even Rohit Sharma looked a little perplexed as he signalled to his teammates that they’d be batting first.
McDonald, Vettori, Di Venuto and Flower were right in the mix as soon as the team bus arrived at the Narendra Modi Stadium at around noon on Sunday. They made a beeline for the pitch, rubbed and felt it up at different spots in a good length area, before the head coach sought out his captain for a long chat.
And like has been a hallmark of the Cummins-McDonald era, the courageous call had been made on the back of a lot of analysis, a lot of well-thought-out scenarios and a lot of well-strategized ideas from McDonald & Co with some of the senior players chipping in. Along with of course a big dollop of fortitude. It wasn’t an easy decision, and it’s not surprising that some experts back home have deemed it as one of the bravest calls ever made in the history of Australian sport. Not to forget a complete buy-in from Cummins and his players.
They’d studied and scrutinised the pitch and its dryness the previous day, and they’d all agreed that this could play a lot like some of the Test wickets they’d received here earlier in the year. But rather than get spooked by it, the Australians seemed to go in with a worst-case-scenario mind-set, and use the custom-made conditions against India and thereby diffusing their might. That was the rationale behind Cummins choosing to field first.
There was also of course the added bonus of not allowing Jadeja and Kuldeep Yadav to use the grip and turn off the pitch during the day. Despite being aware of the significant movement on offer under lights for Bumrah and Shami, the risk Australia were ready to take is to somehow get through that phase with as little damage as possible in return of getting to potentially face 20 overs of spin on a pitch, which with some dew and some moisture in the air, would get the balls to skid on. Once again, they couldn’t have read or implemented the play any better.
In a way it was only apt that Australia would leave their biggest punt for the biggest night of the tournament. It was a World Cup campaign built on brave gambles, starting of course with arriving in India with only 14 fit men, and being prepared to wait on Travis Head to get himself right past the halfway point of the league stage. Head showed why it was worth it literally five days after arriving with that sensational maiden World Cup ton against New Zealand in Dharamsala. Before of course etching his name in ODI folklore, with player of the match performances in the semi-final and the final.
Not having a specialist front-line spinner apart from Adam Zampa, regardless of how well Glenn Maxwell bowled right through, and sticking with the legendary triumvirate of Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc, despite the lack of powerplay wickets in a number of matches, on some unforgiving pitches was a relatively less riskier punt, but that paid dividends too in the business end.
After taking 9 wickets at 47 apiece in the league matches, Starc finished with 6 wickets at 14 in the two knockout matches. Hazlewood’s spell in the semi-final against South Africa might only be second to the late great Shane Warne’s epic at Edgbaston in 1999, and the fast bowler backed it up with another vital spell towards the end to Suryakumar, who looked all at sea against Hazlewood’s change of pace. And then came Cummins with easily one of his best ODI performances with the ball, even if he only had figures of 2/34.
There was also the relentless ideating and manoeuvring of crucial positions in the batting-order. From dropping Steve Smith to No. 4 to accommodate Mitchell Marsh at No. 3, even if it had been decided prior to the tournament, but also then sticking with Marnus Labuschagne as the back-up rescue act ahead of the big-hitting Marcus Stoinis, just in case there were to be a collapse, like there was in both knockout matches. Labuschagne might have failed against South Africa but he certainly made up for it in unforgettable fashion when it counted most.
Where Labuschagne couldn’t save the day in Kolkata, the man who did play that role was Josh Inglis, a shock replacement for Alex Carey after only one game in the first week of the World Cup. Not many bought into the swap in wicket-keepers when it happened, but as the tournament progressed, it all began to make sense.
And while Australia ended up unearthing multiple heroes en route to their sixth World Cup win, behind every bold move, behind every shock and awe decision, was McDonald and his crew orchestrating the play. The unsung stars of what will go down as Australia’s greatest World Cup win. Though individually they all come with their own pedigree, the McDonald-led coaching staff is perhaps among the more ‘fly under the radar’ team managements in cricket currently, especially in terms of the bigger nations.
But between them, and you have to include Andy Flower who’s become an integral part of the group during this World Cup, they have coached and educated themselves with cricket in every part of the world. From England, Australia, the IPL, to the Caribbean and other parts of the subcontinent. Most of them, including Michael Di Venuto, have also held head coach roles at a domestic level for long enough to be intrinsically aware of more match-ups and match situations than a number of high-profile player-turned-coaches.
And that’s what has come to the fore in the last 7 weeks, and it certainly did in front of 92,000 screaming Indian fans in Ahmedabad, as they helped their team silence the crowd and eventually execute the ultimate masterstroke that few had given them a chance of doing only a few weeks earlier, of winning yet another World Cup but also doing so against arguably the most dominant team to ever play a final and not end up with the trophy.
© cricbuzz
