India A had posted 412 runs against Australia A in the first unofficial one-day on Wednesday, but it will truly flaunt its batting riches on Friday when Abhishek Sharma and Tilak Varma join its order for the second match at the Green Park Stadium in Kanpur.
If the contest goes ahead with the constricted boundary measurements that were used for the series opener, Abhishek will flex his top-order bulldozing that had lit up the Asia Cup last month. Tilak’s match-winning fifty in the final against Pakistan embodied his understanding of match situations, and he would want to give another note of that as deputy to Shreyas Iyer.
Arshdeep Singh and Harshit Rana also move to the ‘A’ squad from the triumphant Asia Cup side.
However, India’s grand additions to its squad run the risk of being crushed by inclement weather. The first match was also abandoned without a delivery bowled, before being rescheduled a day later. With just a day’s gap between the second and third games, there’s little room for another rescheduled fixture in the series. The outfield being prone to waterlogging further reduces the chances of action on Friday.
Irrespective of how the weather holds, India A heads to the fixture with confidence. Five of its top six batters struck fifty or more in the first match. After the inclusion of Abhishek and Tilak, each of India A’s top four has a List A strike rate of 100 or more.
India A checked all boxes in the bowling department too, with all frontline bowlers picking at least one wicket.
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The spinners stood out in particular. Despite little room for error on the small ground, Ravi Bishnoi and Nishant Sindhu persisted with their attack. Both extracted purchase off the surface and nabbed two wickets each in the space of eight deliveries to bring Australia A’s flourishing run chase to a crippling halt.
Being able to utilise the help from the pitch is something their Australia A counterparts would want to do. Todd Murphy, Tanveer Sangha and Cooper Connolly combined for 17 overs in the opener and conceded 151 runs for two wickets. Unlike the Indian tweakers, who bowled slower through the air, the Australia A spinners bowled flat and quick for the greater part of their spells.
With the bat, Australia A was guilty of squandering robust starts. The top four batters waltzed away to positive starts, striking at a rate over 100, but only one (Mackenzie Harvey) could sustain it past fifty runs or more. The sudden middle-overs caving in, during which it lost five wickets for 12 runs, might have been induced by the ever-mounting asking rate. Weather permitting on Friday, Australia A would be keen to show that it can carry momentum and tally up big totals, no less than the home team.
Published on Oct 02, 2025
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