Follow UsDespite losing four wickets in the first eight overs, Australia got themselves in a position where they threatened to take the game by its head, with Marcus Stoinis (45) and Tim David (37) batting out in the middle. However, once the partnership broke, the dream of a run-chase seemed to come to a screeching halt.
However, that didn’t bother Australia’s stand-in head coach Andre Borovec, who was pleased with Australia’s positive and aggressive approach. At the same time, he also reckoned that ifs and buts would always surround Australia’s approach because of the double-edged sword.
"One of the key pillars of our game is intent. And you couldn't fault that throughout the innings. Will there be mistakes made? Of course. But if we're making mistakes with good intent, good decisions, good plans, and if the execution doesn't go quite right, well, we're quite happy to accept that,” Borovec said in the post-match press conference.
"It's just that we were behind a couple more wickets at the halfway mark there, four to one," Borovec said. "It's always ifs, buts and maybes, isn't it? But we just fell behind the game a little bit. We knew we probably didn't have the breathing space that India had going into those last ten overs,” he added.
One aspect that Borovec remained concerned about was the execution of the first two balls in T20 cricket. Australia conceded plenty of boundaries early on in the over, which gave away the momentum to the Men in Blue.
"The first two balls in an over can be quite important in T20 cricket," he said. "If you're conceding boundaries on those two balls, it can be difficult to get back. You've got less resources at your disposal as you've shown a couple of deliveries… if you've bowled a bouncer,” he added.
"What we saw tonight was that at those moments, the Indian players were getting ahead in the count and almost getting a good read on what potential ball might come down at them. I think zeroing in on those first two balls and how we can structure those better - that's usually a good starting point."
Australia are approaching this series as an audition for next year’s T20 World Cup in the Caribbean, and one of the moving parts of that puzzle is Steve Smith. Smith has opened the innings thus far in the two T20Is, scoring a half-century in the opener and a 19 off 16 in the second clash.
"We have got a number of things we're looking at," he said. "We've got ten games to fit some of that stuff in. Not all of it is possible. One of the things we had in our planning coming into this series was to have a look at Steve (Smith) up the top. And we've had a chance to do that now and again. We've been extremely happy with that intent that he's shown with the bat."