Australian skipper Pat Cummins made a surprising decision to field first against India in the ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 Final, raising eyebrows and drawing scepticism from former captain Allan Border.
As per Border, he initially thought Cummins had ‘lost the plot’ and expressed doubt about the decision. However, Cummins’ gamble paid off as the Australian bowlers dominated, limiting India to 240 runs on a supposedly dry surface. Despite Rohit Sharma’s explosive batting and the fifties of Virat Kohli and KL Rahul, the dew factor in the second half of the match favoured Australia.
“Pat Cummins’ “bowl first’’ call in the World Cup final was one of the bravest decisions I have seen from a cricket captain. I must be honest, when I heard Pat say “we will bowl’’ I thought “oh no, Patrick, you have lost the plot, you blokes. When Rohit Sharma was going hard early, I thought “what are we doing?’ Those first half a dozen to 10 overs I was thinking, ‘Oh my god, The decision to bowl first has just backfired,” Border said while speaking to Fox Sports.
We tried everything but it wasn’t supposed to be – Rohit Sharma
“The result has not gone our way. We were not good enough today. We tried everything but it wasn’t supposed to be. 20-30 runs more would have been good, KL and Kohli were stitching a good partnership and we were looking at 270-280 but we kept losing wickets. When you have 240 on the board, you want to take wickets but credit to Head and Labuschagne who stitched together a big partnership and put us completely out of the game,” Rohit said.
“We knew under lights it would be slightly better to bat, but don’t want to give that as an excuse. We didn’t put enough runs on the board. With the seamers upfront, we took those 3 wickets and another wicket there, we could open up the game. Credit to those two guys in the middle for stitching an outstanding partnership,” he added.
