India vs Australia 1st T20I: Three reasons why India lost the close encounter

India had a remarkable outing in Australia between December 2018 and January 2019, when they won both the Test series and ODI series 2-1 and tied the T20I series 1-1. And now the Australians have come to India for a return tour, and the first T20I concluded with the visitors winning by three wickets and gaining an unassailable series lead with only one more game to go.

Winning the toss, Australia opted to put India under the batting test first, before attempting to chase. And the visiting bowlers did a pretty neat job, restricting India to just 126/7 in the allotted 20 overs - by no means a small feat, especially on an Indian surface.

Only KL Rahul(50 off 36, 6 fours, 1 six) was able to produce an impact with the bat, while the rest meekly surrendered.

In reply, the Indian bowlers also produced a good show by keeping the Aussie batsmen on their toss, but opener D'Arcy Short(37 off 37, 5 fours) and Glenn Maxwell(56 off 43, 6 fours, 2 sixes) reduced a lot of the load for the visitors.

In the end, Pat Cummins and Jhye Richardson carried them home on the very last ball of the game. Australia thus won by three wickets.

Let us now take a look at three reasons why India lost today's fixture against the Kangaroos. The reasons are pretty obvious and they are as follows.

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#1 Apart from KL Rahul, all other Indian batsmen failed to click

India v Australia - T20I: Game 1

KL Rahul has, of late been facing a lot of fire for many reasons - primarily his lack of form which was evident since the T20I series against Australia in early December 2018, and secondarily for his role in the Koffee With Karan fiasco that rocked the Indian cricketing sphere early this year.

But Rahul banished many of his demons tonight with that singular knock of his, proving once and for all as to why he is eligible enough for a spot in the Indian eleven.

The other batsmen, who should have taken a page of Rahul's book, merely failed to deliver anything worthy of their name and fame in the cricketing arena. While Rohit Sharma, Rishabh Pant, Dinesh Karthik and Krunal Pandya fell for scores less than or equal to five, Virat Kohli seemed to start off well but displayed more cheekiness than necessary in going towards Adam Zampa and hoicking, a poorly-timed shot turning into a simple catch in the end.

MS Dhoni for his part had to huff and puff to make every single run and took as many as 37 balls to produce 29 runs. In the big pictue, it may seem a great contribution, but it could have been more.

India managed to score 49 runs from the batting power play and 80 runs from around the first ten overs. That they decelerated since then, seems to have not much of an excuse.

Everyone apart from Rahul could have tried harder, we fill. Given how we saw the Aussie innings pan out later, even 10-15 extra runs would have been an adequate addition for a win.

#2 Glenn Maxwell's solid batting in the middle overs for Australia

Australia restricted India for less than 130

While the Indian camp had KL Rahul, the Aussies had Glenn Maxwell. Maxwell is one foreign cricketer who has a lot of fans in India for his big-hitting qualities, and that he was finding it hard to discover his Midas touch, had been bothering a lot of us.

Anyone who followed the Big Bash League 2018/19 will be aware of how Maxi returned big-time into being the swashbuckler that he is, as it was his batting in some must-win games that more-or-less earned his team the Melbourne Stars a place in the finals. Today, Maxwell was able to continue from where he left off, giving Australia the much-needed boost for the win before succumbing to a wicket himself.

Maxwell arrived at the middle when the situation was a bit tricky, with both Aaron Finch and Marcus Stoinis already back in the hut with the scoreboard reading just 5. Together with D'Arcy Short, Maxwell then rebuilt the innings without wasting balls either, often finding the big hits to keep the scoreboard ticking very well.

By the time he fell in the fourteenth over, Australia needed less than 40 runs with as many as six overs and a bit more left to possibly try and finish the job, which is what eventually happened too.

#3 Umesh Yadav's last over

Glenn Maxwell

Anyone who saw today's game will have obtained an insight as to why Jasprit Bumrah is regarded as the best bowler in the world. He was asked to bowl the penultimate over and he responded with wickets of Peter Handscomb and the dangerous Nathan Coulter-Nile, while just giving away two runs.

India thus clearly had the upper hand while Umesh Yadav was coming in to bowl the last over, but things really went haywire since.

The pacer's death-bowling was literally all over the place, with him not resorting to any consistent line and length, probably to create confusion in the minds of the new and unsettled batsmen who had just walked in since the last over.

Though that was fair on Umesh's part, two of his balls were fairly loose deliveries, both of them slow and meaty enough for Pat Cummins and Jhye Richardson to smack for fours, and the game got over on an anticlimactic note.

Bumrah and Mohammad Shami have more or less sealed their World Cup spots, with a third spot open for grabs. Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Umesh Yadav are touted to be contesting for the coveted position but this kind of a death bowling will not help the Vidarbha bowler's case.