cricket

Updated: Mar 02, 2019 08:32 IST

India openers Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan have been consistent performers at the top of the innings ensuring that the middle-order gets the perfect platform to launch into the opposition bowlers. And going into the opening ODI of the five-match series between India and Australia, the duo need just 77 runs to complete 1000 runs for the opening wicket against the Aussies in ODIs. They will be the second opening pair to reach this landmark after West Indies’ Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes.

While the duo have failed against the Aussies in recent times, managing scores of 1, 47 and 15 in the last three games, the numbers take a complete u-turn when it comes to playing at homes. Three of the four hundreds have come in India. 57.74 per cent of their runs against Australia have come in India (533/923).

India’s poor starts in the recently concluded ODI series in Australia also rose from Dhawan’s poor show. In the recently concluded series in Australia, Dhawan scored 55 runs in 3 innings at an average of 18.33 which is his second worst bilateral series average in ODIs (minimum 3 innings played). Interestingly, even though Dhawan’s first 7 ODIs in India were against the Aussies, he hasn’t played a single match against them since 2013.

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Openers are known to have certain superstitions the same has seen Dhawan take first strike at the beginning of an innings just 6 times in his career. He’s been at the non-striker’s end 116 times overall. Maybe he could try taking strike and change his recent run of poor runs a bit.

Speaking after the loss in the T20I series, Kohli had spoken how he will continue to experiment keeping in mind the upcoming World Cup, but there is hardly a chance for any experiment at the top of the Indian order. “Kohli also hinted that he would continue to experiment with his playing XI keeping in mind the upcoming ICC World Cup. “We wanted to give everyone some game time, we’ve seen how they react under pressure, there is a series coming up and we’ll try more things. It’s up to them to deliver the goods,” he had said.