India vs Australia: Bengaluru to offer sporting pitch for second T20I

Contrary to how the games generally turn out on the batting-friendly pitches of India, the first T20I between the hosts and Australia yielded just 253 runs in the full quota of 40 overs. Asked to bat first, India could only post 126 for 7 on the sluggish Vizag pitch. At one stage when KL Rahul and Virat Kohli were hitting a flurry of boundaries, it looked like the Men in Blue are well on their way to score above 150.

However, as the game progressed, the pitch slowed down and shot-making became extremely tough. That even the in-form MS Dhoni could score only 29 off 37 balls pretty much tells the story of the pitch. Australia, on the other hand, also nearly made heavy weather of the relatively easy chase. They only managed to pull off the win on the final delivery of the game when Pat Cummins took a double off Umesh Yadav’s bowling as the visitors scored the required 14 runs in the final over.

Speaking after the game, Australia star Glenn Maxwell, who had scored a match-winning fifty, had said that scoring on the pitch was difficult. “It [farming the strike] was probably fair enough with the way the wicket was – being difficult to score for any batter, let alone a guy who is not known for his power-hitting in Chahal,” Maxwell had said. “MS is obviously a world-class finisher and even he was finding it hard to hit the middle of the bat.

Run-feast in Bengaluru?

Well, it looks a high-scoring game is in the store when both the teams take on each other in the second and final T20I in Bengaluru on February 27. R. Sudhakar Rao, secretary of KSCA, that the M Chinnaswamy track looks ‘hard and bouncy’ which will help the batsmen play their shots.

“It’s a sporting wicket,” said R. Sudhakar Rao as quoted by Sportstar. “It looks like a hard and bouncy wicket. My prediction is the team batting first should be able to be able get 180. It’s a good surface and both the batsmen and bowlers should enjoy playing on it.”

Traditionally, the Chinnaswamy ground has witnessed high-scoring games. The last time India had played a T20I at this venue, they had piled up 202 against England.

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