India U19secured a convincing seven-wicket win with 117 deliveries to spare in the first Youth ODI against Australia U19 at the Ian Healy Oval in Brisbane on Sunday. With this, they took a 0-1 lead in the three-match 50-over series.
John James, coming in at No. 8, emerged as Australia's top-scorer with an unbeaten 77-run knock off just 68 deliveries. He came in to bat when his team was 107/6 in the 31st over. Tom Hogan (41 off 81) and Steven Hogan (39 off 82) stitched together a 55-run stand for the fifth
wicket. This partnership was Australia's greatest stand during their innings.
Coming to India's bowling, every bowler other than Naman Pushpak (0/37 in 10 overs) scalped a wicket. Henil Patel (3/38 in 10 overs) was the pick of the bowlers. Kanishk Chauhan (2/39 in 10 overs) and Kishan Kumar (2/59 in 10 overs) provided vital breakthroughs.
It was a good batting surface, but Australia did not make the most out of it. Frequent wickets from the Indian bowlers kept the hosts’ progress in check throughout their innings. Three batters from the top five registered ducks.
Vaibhav Suryavanshi kickstarted the run-chase off to a flying start. Through a flurry of boundaries, he brought down the required run rate by a significant margin. However, Suryavanshi could not capitalize on his good start. He was dismissed after scoring 38 off 22. Charles Lachmund struck with the strikes of Suryavanshi and skipper Ayush Mhatre (6 off 10).
After Mhatre, Vihaan Malhotra (9 off 10) was the second batter to get dismissed for a single-digit score. From that point onwards, it was all wicketkeeper-batter Abhigyan Kundu and Vedant Trivedi. They added an unbeaten 152-run partnership for the fourth wicket off just 126 balls to enable their team to cross the finish line without any further blows to the scoreboard. The other couple of ODIs will be played at the same venue on September 24 and September 26.
