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Virat Kohli's selfless act for Bumrah involving Chepauk DJ during IND vs AUS World Cup clash wins hearts
Spinners may have dominated against Australia but Jasprit Bumrah started it all off by getting India an early breakthrough.
India's 2023 World Cup campaign got off to the best possible start at the MA Chidambaram Stadium. Not only did they beat Australia by six wickets, they were airtight with their bowling and fielding and then managed to fight back from a tricky situation in their chase. Australia batted first in the scorching heat of Chennai and were all out for 199.
As is usually the case at the Chepauk Stadium, the pitch provided a lot of assistance to the spinners which Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav and Ravichandran Ashwin exploited to the full. While it may have been spinners who took a majority of the wickets, it all started off with India's ace fast bowler Jasprit Bumrah dismissing the dangerous Mitchell Marsh early in the innings. Bumrah struck with the second ball of the third over of the innings, getting an edge off Marsh to fly to first slip where Virat Kohli took a sharp catch tumbling to his left.
While Bumrah did not get any wickets in that spell, he was economic and made scoring difficult for the Australians. Bumrah then returned for another spell. Kohli, as he usually does, was egging the crowd on throughout the innings. In the 33rd over, when the stadium's DJ asked the crowd to cheer for Kohli, the former India captain gestured that the crowd should instead chant for Bumrah. “Why are you cheering for me?” he seemed to say and then pointed at Bumrah, signalling them to cheer for the bowler instead. Bumrah went on to get one more wicket in the form of Australia captain Pat Cummins in the 43rd over.
India, however, were rattled early in the chase as they lost Rohit Sharma, Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer on ducks. They found themselves tottering at 2/3 at the end of the second over. From there, Kohli and KL Rahul compiled a masterful 165-run stand for the fourth wicket to end any chances that Australia may have seen of winning the match. Kohli, who was dropped early in his innings, eventually fell to Josh Hazlewood on 85 off 116 while Rahul finished the match unbeaten on 97 off 115.
