Champions Trophy - India v Australia Report Card
Featuring hidden immunity idols and home ground advantage
Hidden Immunity Idols
Grade: B+
The Champions Trophy inched towards its tiresome and predictable conclusion, as India summoned a fresh side to their Dubai lair for devouring. This time around, it was Steve Smith’s Baby Australians, a conclusion so foregone that I skipped the opening overs in favour of watching Australian Survivor. I therefore missed Travis Head’s cameo blitz and tuned in instead just in time for some predictably boring middle overs work from Smith and Marnus Labuschagne.
Question: Do the boring middle overs need some kind of Hidden Immunity Idol to spice things up? Maybe hidden in the stump microphone? And with the power to negate all wicket-taking deliveries? It wouldn’t hurt.
Instead, Australia had to resort to more traditional forms of batting advantages - namely, sensible innings from Smith and Alex Carey. The Smith one, 73 (96), was nothing new, but the Carey one, 61 (57), was compiled with such crisp strokeplay that it suggested he may well have fallen into one of those Pakistan pools again.
Home Ground Advantage
Grade: D
Despite those innings, a constant drip of wickets meant Australia could only reach 264 all out, way too few runs for the Baby Bowlers to successfully defend.
And so it proved while I slept, the ongoing absurdity of this tournament format and India’s home ground advantage proving too hard to overcome. (Oh, sure, India may claim Dubai isn’t a home game, but there’s still that telltale deathly silence whenever the opposition hits a boundary or takes a wicket. We see you. Or hear you. Or don’t hear you. Whatever applies.)
Of course, the funniest thing about India inevitably winning this Pakistan-hosted tournament without ever entering Pakistan is that they’ve used all their influence to successfully manoeuvre themselves into a position where not a single person will be impressed by them storming through the tournament undefeated (a feat they might well have accomplished had they played in Pakistan anyway). Great stuff.
(And, when I say ‘not a single person’, I’m obviously excluding the billion plus fans in India, who will be very impressed indeed by this feat. And rightly so. Or wrongly so. Whatever applies.)
On the other hand, we must also never forget it’s just the Champions Trophy. So let’s not get too worked up about it either way.