Shikhar Dhawan reveals the reason behind India's thumping defeat against Australia

After the One Day International (ODI) series victory in India in 2019, Australia seem to be in a similar kind of mood as they humiliated Virat Kohli’s men by ten wickets at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on Tuesday in the first of the three-match series.

Though it was a collective failure from team India, opener Shikhar Dhawan emerged as great positive for the home side. His gritty 74 off 91 deliveries and second-wicket partnership of 121 runs with KL Rahul had given India a perfect start.

Dhawan’s innings at the top provided the Men in Blue something to fight for before his efforts were nullified by quick loss of wickets as the hosts witnessed a middle-order collapse which reduced them from 134/1 to 164/5.

“A bad day at the office”: Shikhar Dhawan post the loss

Disappointing Dhawan also echoed the same and said that the first 10-15 overs belonged to India but it was the four wickets in quick succession which changed the course of the game and gave Australians the steering wheel.

“KL (Rahul) got out. That time we planned to accelerate and those four wickets we lost, that’s where we lost the momentum. We were targeting 300 runs but we ended up scoring less runs. In bowling, we could not take early wickets. They outplayed us,” Dhawan as saying.

On being asked if the Indian team, especially the batting department, were relying heavily on the top order to do the bulk of the task, Dhawan said, “See it is just one bad day in office. We played really well against West Indies, there all the batsmen did well.”

At a time when many are questioning the Indian skipper’s decision to drop himself to number four for accommodating Rahul at three, Dhawan said it was Kohli’s choice to do so. However, he expressed that he was having the feeling that Kohli might consider his decision in the next match.

“See that is a captain’s choice, KL is batting well, he did well in the last series and he played really well and he played well today. I feel it is the captain’s choice where he wants to play and he has done amazing at number three, maybe I feel, he will think about it to go at number three again,” the 34-year-old said.

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