Two good, two bad as Kuldeep Yadav's hat-trick rattles Australia in India's win

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  • Kuldeep Yadav became only the third Indian to take an ODI hat-trick.

    India got the better of Australia by 50 runs after a hard-fought win played under extremely humid conditions in the second ODI of the five-match series at Eden Gardens in Kolkata.

    After winning the toss and batting first, the hosts were bowled out in the final delivery of the 50 overs for 252 runs. In reply the visitors were bowled out themselves for 202 after a fine effort from India’s bowlers.

    On a day when there were talking points galore, we look at the two good and two bad performances.

    The Good

    Kuldeep Yadav’s hat-trick

    The young wrist-spinner has been turning eyeballs ever since bursting onto the scene with his unique action. He did not get the best of starts on Thursday as the Australian batsmen looked to attack him early on.

    Glenn Maxwell tore into the youngster in one particular over when he hit two consecutive sixes with his trademark slog-sweep.

    At the end of his first seven overs, Kuldeep remained wicketless and had to be taken out of of the attack due to Maxwell’s assault. He was then brought back on after the Australian’s departure and boy did he turn it on.

    In his eighth over, the 22-year-old became only the third Indian to take an ODI hat-trick. Matthew Wade chopped a traditional leg-spinner outside off-stump to provide Kuldeep with his first scalp of the day.

    In the very next delivery, the youngster had Ashton Agar trapped plumb after the Aussie all-rounder failed to connect to a full and straight leg-spinner.

    With the Eden Garden crowd on its feet in anticipation of a famous hat-trick, Kuldeep duly delivered with a perfect googly to the new man Pat Cummins.

    Cummins got forward to defend the delivery but the googly meant that the ball took the outside edge of his bat to settle straight into the gloves of MS Dhoni, sending supporters and players alike into delirium.

    Virat Kohli stands tall as others falter

    On a day when humidity took its toll on many of the players on the field, India skipper Kohli displayed a sense of calm as he went about doing what he does best, scoring runs.

    Kolhi walked out to bat after Rohit Sharma’s early dismissal and looked at ease on the Eden Garden surface which was a bit two-paced early on.

    He formed a crucial second-wicket partnership of over a hundred with Ajinkya Rahane. Run-scoring wasn’t easy in the first-half of the match but Kohli huffed and puffed in the Kolkata heat as he went about converting the ones into twos.

    The batting maestro was going along nicely at 92 with eight boundaries to his kitty before playing-on to a Nathan Coulter-Nile delivery while trying to dab the ball towards third-man. It is testament to Kohli’s talent that none of the other Indian batsman apart from Rahane found the going easy on the Eden Gardens pitch.

    Ultimately he fell short of his 31st ODI ton as he suffered a rare failure in the nineties.

    The Bad

    Rohit Sharma fails miserably on his favourite ground

    Eden Gardens is the venue where Sharma scored his world-record 173-ball 264 against the Sri Lankans in 2014. In his previous nine innings at the iconic ground, the Indian vice-captain has scored 794 runs in all formats at an average of 113 and a strike-rate of 99.87.

    It is fair to say that Sharma has a love affair with the venue. On Thursday though, it was probably his worst game ever at the ground. Opening the batting for India after Kohli won the toss and elected to bat first, Sharma never got going in his short innings.

    His timing was off and runs seemed hard to come by. In the end, his misery was ended by Coulter-Nile when he attempted to drive a fuller delivery on off-stump and on the up, straight back at the bowler.

    Coulter-Nile failed to grasp the ball at the first attempt but after some neat juggling skills completed the catch ultimately.

    The bad times for Sharma did not just end there. There was more misery to come when he took the field for Australia’s chase. Normally a reliable slip-fielder, Sharma dropped a sitter at second-slip after Travis Head had edged a Bhuvneshwar Kumar delivery.

    Head had not even crossed 10 when he was dropped and then went on to score at a quick pace as a threatening partnership developed between him and Smith. At one point it looked that the drop would prove too costly for India but thankfully for Sharma, the bowlers saved his blushes in the end.

    Hilton Cartwright’s trial by fire

    The 25-year-old opener was given his Australia debut in Chennai but it wasn’t the most memorable of bows by any standard. The right-handed batsman was clean bowled by a Jasprit Bumrah delivery which found the gap between his bat and pad to hit the top of off-stump.

    If Cartwright was hoping for a change in fortunes in Kolkata, he would have ended up bitterly disappointed. With the ball being swung around in both directions by Bhuvneshwar Kumar, the Zimbabwe-born man was all-at-sea at the start of Australia’s chase.

    Not the best of starts to Cartwright's ODI career.

    Not the best of starts to Cartwright’s ODI career.

    After being beaten multiple times, Cartwright’s luck ran out in the third over when a Kumar delivery swung back in sharply to take the top of the right-hander’s off-stump.

    An eerily similar dismissal to his Chennai failure, the warning bells are out for Cartwright already. Having got the chance to open due to the injury to Aaron Finch, time is running out for the youngster to make an impact.

    Two runs in as many innings could see the batsman dropped in the next match with Peter Handscomb waiting in the wings.

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