Virat Kohli and KL Rahul ensure India’s Cricket World Cup campaign gets off to a flyer

Thanks to a middle-order masterclass by Virat Kohli and KL Rahul as well as an all-round bowling effort, India defeated Australia by six wickets in Chennai.

Just 12 balls into India’s chase of the low target of 200, and they found themselves in a rather precarious situation. The hosts had been reduced to 2/3 and nerves were jangling. Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood sent Ishan Kishan, Shreyas Iyer, and captain Rohit Sharma back to the pavillion for ducks.

This is the situation KL Rahul found himself in, when he walked out to the crease as the number 5 batter. Rahul had just kept wickets on a hot and humid Chennai afternoon for 50 overs and he had to catch his breath as he had to rush through his shower.

“I thought I would get a good half an hour - [or] an hour's - break, put the feet up and just rest up. But I was out there in no time, so there was a bit of rush. I was just trying to get my breath back," he revealed in the post-match presentation.

The Indian top order being prone to collapses at the World Cup and ICC tournaments aren’t exactly a new phenomenon. The team has often suffered from mental collapses during such periods and a similar state of panic had gripped the dressing room while Chepauk fell completely silent.

The importance of winning the opening match could not be over-emphasized, more so against record champions Australia, who incidentally had not lost a World Cup opening match this century.

When Rahul walked out to bat, veteran Virat Kohli was present at the other end and he had seen Rohit and Iyer lose their wickets in quick succession to Hazlewood. The advice from Kohli was to do some Test-match batting for a while in order to get India back on track. The pitch at Chennai had purchase in it for the bowlers and Indian spinners had managed to make the most out of it in the first innings.

Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav, and Jasprit Bumrah shared seven wickets between them to prevent Australia from finding a foothold in the game in the first place and bundled them out for a score of just 199.

"Virat said there's big help in the wicket, and [we] just have to play proper shots and play like it's Test cricket for some time and see where it goes," Rahul said. "That was mostly the plan, and happy that we could do the job for the team."

Both Kohli and Rahul started their innings slow and were more than happy to see out the inswingers and outswingers of Starc and Hazlewood. Kohli also received a lifeline while batting on 13 when he misjudged a short ball from Hazlewood and miscued his pull shot. The ball travelled miles in the air before landing safely despite the efforts of both Alex Carey and Mitchell Marsh.

Kohli ended up making the most of his new life, and together with Rahul, he showed tremendous reading of the situation and opted for a defense-first approach. The loose deliveries were dispatched to the boundary every now and then and it was a classic case of risk-free batting.

Rahul also looked effortless in this role and hardly had to break a sweat. Unlike Kohli, he remained in complete control throughout the innings. Middling every single ball, he lent adequate support to Kohli as they started mounting the counter-charge against Australia after the 25^th over.

Together, the duo added 167 runs - the highest fourth-wicket partnership for India in ODI World Cup history as they went past the previous best record of 142 runs shared between Navjot Singh Sidhu and Vinod Kambli in 1996.

Kohli completed his half-century in 72 deliveries while Rahul took 75 deliveries. By the end, neither of them managed to reach the three-figure mark - Kohli dismissed by Hazlewood at 85 while Rahul’s delicious six while looking for a boundary didn’t leave enough margin to score a century.

But the job was done! A victory over the five-time world champions under testing conditions and on a trying track is as great a psychological victory as India could’ve asked for to begin their World Cup campaign on home soil.