For a couple of hours on Monday afternoon in Lucknow, Australia’s World Cup looked cooked. It wasn’t just that Sri Lanka’s openers were scoring with ease – good teams have passages of play go against them. It was the sense that everything was running against Australia, that nothing was working. In the first over, Mitchell Starc convinced his captain Pat Cummins to go for an lbw review that was not out for about six different reasons. That meant that in the 10th over Cummins was reluctant to review a Glenn Maxwell lbw appeal that would have been given out.
It was the kind of self-inflicted injury that goes against struggling teams. This after Pathum Nissanka’s edge from Maxwell was missed behind the stumps, and Kusal Perera was reprieved when Starc wasn’t game to take off the bails after the non-striker left his ground early. The pair made hay in a wicketless stand of 125, against an Australian team whose tournament to date had involved being bowled out twice short of 200, dropping about a dozen catches, and after 12 good balls to begin their tournament against India in Chennai had since conceded 625 runs for eight wickets in 107 overs.
