Team India loses first ODI bilateral series at home since 2019
Team India has had a really disastrous end to their 2023 ODI World Cup preparations. The World No.1 T20 team has lost 2-1 to Australia in the recently conducted home series. With this series defeat, the Men in Blue has lost an ODI series at home since 2019.
The 3rd ODI between India and Australia happening in Chennai saw Australia post 269 after winning the toss. Team India failed to chase the target despite a fifty from Virat Kohli and a fighting 40 from Hardik Pandya. Rohit Sharma, who looked dejected after the series loss, stated, “A lot of takeaways (from the series), just not look at these 3 games. The 9 ODIs we played from January, we can take a lot of positives from that. A loss like that really hurts. But again, we can understand what we need to do better as a group.”
He further added, “It’s not about going out there and pin-pointing at one or two individuals. It’s not what I do or it’s not what the team does as well. It’s a collective failure that we need to look at and reflect. We have to understand that in 5 months time, we will be playing on these kind of conditions. We need to understand the ideas and the thoughts.”
The 3-match series saw Team India win the first match comfortably by 5 wickets. In the 2nd ODI, the Men in Blue had a dismal batting performance. The Indians were all out to 117 runs which the Australians easily chased down and leveled the series.
With this effort, Australia has become the new number-one ODI team in the ICC Rankings. Currently, the Australians have occupied the number one Test team spot in the ICC Rankings.
