Finch, Smith tons help Australia take series opener

Like the interminable lockdowns that preceded it, Australia's first win of the men's international summer took longer than expected and encountered hurdles along the way before numbers finally told their compelling story.

The home team's daunting 6-374 in the first Dettol Series ODI was founded on centuries to Aaron Finch (114) and Steve Smith (105), and seemed likely to overwhelm India once their talismanic skipper Virat Kohli was dismissed for 21.

But the hope that was stirred when Kohli was dropped at the start of his innings resurfaced through a 128-run fifth-wicket partnership between opener Shikhar Dhawan and Hardik Pandya before both fell as the required run rate soared.

Ultimately, it was Australia's capacity to produce two century makers as well as a pair of strike bowlers – Adam Zampa (4-54) and Josh Hazlewood (3-55) – who were able to claim wickets with regularity that proved the difference in a game where both teams found themselves blowing out some understandable cobwebs.

Australia paid a price for their 66-run win, achieved an hour after the scheduled finish time due to dire over rates and numerous other miscellaneous delays, when all-rounder Marcus Stoinis suffered a side injury while bowling his seventh over of the day.

He underwent a scan late tonight to gauge the extent of the injury.

However, on the basis of bald statistics – a metric the population has become familiar with during the daily COVID19 counts – the hosts' win in the first of the three-match campaign was duly deserved.

It was Australia's highest ODI total against India (eclipsing the 2-359 they clubbed in the 2003 World Cup final at Wanderers) and their fourth-highest score against all comers on their home patch.

To reel it in, India needed to not only post the highest run chase at the SCG in four decades of ODI matches – the benchmark being Australia's 334 to defeat England in 2011 – it would require their largest-ever second-innings score in the 50-over format.

For that degree of improbability, it was accepted that Kohli had to peel off a big hundred, given India's previous-best run chase (1-362 against Australia in Jaipur seven years ago) was fuelled by his remarkable unbeaten century off 52 balls.

So when the India maestro top-edged a Pat Cummins bouncer with just a single to his name, the game seemingly hung in the air as Adam Zampa settled beneath the chance as it swirled on the early evening breeze at fine leg.

It barely touched Zampa's cupped hands, instead striking him on the leg as he tumbled to the turf and the India fans seated behind him roared with a crescendo that gave the impression Sydney was hosting a full-house.

The miss was among a litany of dropped catches and fluffed fielding attempts, with both teams guilty of misjudgements on the boundary rope perhaps because they had become so used to playing and practicing in front of banks of vacant seats.

But it was Mitchell Starc's sure-handed take while planted just inside the rope at long-on that ended Pandya's exhilarating knock on 90 (from 76 balls faced) that effectively sealed Australia's win.

For all the change unleashed by the pandemic, there was some reassuring normality at the SCG even before a ball had been delivered.

Within two minutes of the Australia players arriving in the home team's dressing room, Smith had affixed his pads and bounded down the stairs en route to the practice nets to ensure his eye was as sharp as his hands were solid.

For a while it seemed he might not be afforded the chance to take his talents to the middle.

Finch and David Warner made a measured start, as befitting the first men's international of the home summer and despite both having spent the preceding couple of months involved in the fast-forward T20 format of the Indian Premier League.

Rather than blazing boundaries, the pair relied on sharp singles to maintain a rate of around a run per ball, with Warner sliding in to safety to narrowly beat a direct hit from Kohli before he had reached double figures.

Australia's openers then gradually accelerated as India's over rate declined, with Finch signalling the change of gears by clubbing leg spinner Yuzvendra Chahal into the members grandstand which meant the ball had to be wiped with a sanitised cloth having been hurled back by a crowd member.

Next over, Finch reached 50 and immediately after he and Warner celebrated their 11th century opening stand in ODIs which places them behind only Adam Gilchrist and Matthew Hayden (16) for the most triple-figure starts in 50-overs cricket for Australia.

The pair have already doubled the number of 150-plus opening stand their legendary predecessors managed, and added another before Warner fell to what he and his partner clearly believed was a technology error.

Given not out on-field when he launched a drive at a yorker-length delivery from Mohammed Shami, Warner was then referred the video umpire by Kohli's review and when hot-spot showed no compelling evidence of an edge the verdict was left to the real-time snickometer.

When that revealed a spike, Finch gestured to the India fielders watching the evidence on the electronic scoreboard the noise was merely a result of Warner's bat striking the pitch.

But the video referee – former Australia Test bowler Paul Reiffel – ruled otherwise and Smith arrived at the crease with his team well set at 1-156 in the 28th over and Finch 73 not out and eyeing the men's summer's first ton.

It became immediately clear the former skipper felt he might beat his successor to that mark, as he launched into an array of shots ranging from unconventional to incomparable.

India believed they had his scalp when, on 15, he was adjudged lbw to left-arm spinner Ravi Jadeja operating around the wicket and sliding the ball into the right-hander.

However, Smith believed impact on his back leg was high and upon calling for a review the technology benefited Australia by showing the ball clearing middle stump and the bails by the width of the sabre blade that Jadaeja likes to pretend his wielding in moments of celebration.

India's bowlers were instead put to the sword from that point, as Smith imperiously launched balls over extra cover, through the leg side and down the ground as Finch closed in on his milestone.

By the time the skipper raised his 17th ODI century – only Warner, Mark Waugh (both18) and Ricky Ponting (29) have scored more for Australia – Smith had reached 57 from 41 balls, adding 44 from just 27 balls while his skipper was traversing the nineties.

Finch's departure for 114, when he fell victim to his own form and got too much bat on an attempted ramp over the keeper's head that instead popped up a lob, and Stoinis's first-ball duck brought together Smith and Glenn Maxwell as mayhem ensued.

Despite his senior partner's white-hot touch, Maxwell outshone him in their partnership that brought 50 runs off 21 balls of which the former contributed 41 to Smith's 10.

Ten of those runs came from two typically audacious Maxwell switch-hits off the hapless Chahal (whose 1-89 from 10 overs represented the most expensive ODI spell by an India bowler in Australia).

The first of those cleared the backward square leg rope on a single bounce, while the second slammed flush into the fence.

When Maxwell holed out to long-on, his Australia record for the fastest ODI (off 51 balls against Sri Lanka at the SCG in the 2015 World Cup) was already beyond Smith's reach.

But James Faulkner's second-best mark of a ton from 57 balls (against India at Bangalore in 2013) might have been overtaken if Smith could find 19 runs from six deliveries.

As it transpired, it took him 11 balls which meant he settled for bronze but would have taken greater satisfaction from seeing Australia's score reach 360 and thereby pass the highest ODI total against India on home turf (previously 5-359 at the SCG in 2003-04).

The start of India's run chase, after an abbreviated tea break due to the visitors' glacial over rate, could scarcely have been a greater contrast to Australia's measured beginning.

Starc's opening over was so erratic it blew out to 11 deliveries of which four were wides (including one of those that eluded keeper Alex Carey and scorched to the boundary) as well as a front-foot no-ball that yielded another boundary from the subsequent free-hit.

It might have felt like it to Starc, but his wasn't the longest over in ODI history.

That dubious honour still belongs to Pakistan's Mohammad Sami whose 17-ball effort (with seven wides and four no-balls) against Bangladesh in the 2004 Asia Cup will take some toppling.

Emboldened by that 20-run opening over, Mayank Agarwal and Shikhar Dhawan kept going at T20 speed as India's 50 arrived in the fifth over.

The pair threw their bats at everything as Australia's bowlers struggled to maintain control amid the onslaught until Hazlewood induced the first error via a short ball.

Agarwal spooned a catch to point as he backed away and try to lift the Australia quick over the off-side field, and Kohli then unleashed an entertaining counterattack upon being gifted a life by Zampa.

But when his luck abandoned him three overs later, and Shreyas Iyer became Hazlewood's third short-ball victim in the same over the assignment for India's batting line-up was simply too steep.

Australia XI: David Warner, Aaron Finch (c), Steven Smith, Marcus Stoinis, Marnus Labuschagne, Alex Carey (wk), Glenn Maxwell, Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Adam Zampa, Josh Hazlewood

India XI: Shikhar Dhawan, Mayank Agarwal, Virat Kohli (c), Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul (wk), Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Mohammed Shami, Yuzvendra Chahal, Navdeep Saini, Jasprit Bumrah

Dettol ODI Series v India 2020

Australia ODI squad: Aaron Finch (c), Sean Abbott, Ashton Agar, Alex Carey , Pat Cummins (vc), Cameron Green, Josh Hazlewood, Moises Henriques, Marnus Labuschagne, Glenn Maxwell, Daniel Sams, Steven Smith, Mitchell Starc, Marcus Stoinis, Andrew Tye, Matthew Wade, David Warner, Adam Zampa

India ODI squad: Virat Kohli (c), Shikhar Dhawan, Shubman Gill, KL Rahul (wk), Sanju Samson (wk), Shreyas Iyer, Manish Pandey, Hardik Pandya, Mayank Agarwal, Ravindra Jadeja, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Navdeep Saini, Shardul Thakur.

First ODI: Australia won by 66 runs

Second ODI: November 29, SCG, 2.40pm AEDT

Third ODI: December 2, Manuka Oval, 2.40pm AEDT

*The matches and travel remain subject to any relevant government restrictions or requirements