How Australian pacers managed to rule over Motera?

IND vs AUS ICC World Cup 2023 final Fast bowler Mitchell Starc took three wickets as Australia dismissed India for 240 in the ICC World Cup 2023 final in front of nearly 130000 fans in Ahmedabad on Sunday Fivetime champions Australia elected to field first and the players backed up skipper Pat Cummins decision with disciplined bowling and impressive fielding at the worlds biggest cricket stadium filled with a sea of Indias blue jerseysAustralias dominance over the hosts had multiple focal points to it while India made a couple of moments of their own through fifties by Virat Kohli and KL Rahul Heres a closer look at important moments in the matchSkip Rohit lives by his wordFrom the beginning of the tournament Rohit batted only in one gear evidenced by his strikerate of 126 On this day the Mumbaikar made runs at 151 His strategy was clear blunt the Aussie new ball bowlers and the skipper blasted two sixes off pacer Josh Hazlewood to give early momentum to his sideBut Rohits innings did not bloom into something bigger His effort to hoist offspinner Glenn Maxwell over the ring ended when Travis Head took a lovely runningdiving catch towards sweeper cover Australia snapped Indias march too for that momentAustralias fielding ten on tenThe Antipodeans have always been a very good fielding side and they raised the bar one notch up in the summit clash Travis Head took that brilliant running catch to dismiss Rohit Sharma and David Warner made more than one diving saves near the ropes to save the boundaries leaving Indian batters a bit frustratedIt also forced them to change their gungho approach that they followed so far in the tournament Cummins also made some really good field placementsWhen Kohli and Rahul were batting the Aussies skipper opened the cover region with a sweeper in place and closed ranks around the squareleg and midon areas It was a clear ploy to force the Indian batters to take more risks to make quick runs or contend with those workmanlike singles to covers and legsideAlso ReadFort Motera ready for cricketrsquos biggest battleEdgy Gill and distraught ShreyasThis was the first 50over World Cup final for Shubman Gill and Shreyas Iyer and they looked a bit nervous Gill was like a cat on a hot tin roof and hardly offered a settled moment His harrowing time at crease ended when a halfhearted pull off leftarm pacer Mitchell Starc found Adam Zampa at the edge of the circleShreyas came to this match riding on backtoback hundreds against Netherlands and New Zealand But this noon his innings lasted just three balls Cummins caught him rooted inside the crease with a delivery that jagged back just enough at a fair clipKohli Rahul stand outThey joined forces when India were shaking at 81 for 3 but Kohli and Rahul sussed up the conditions and pitch very well knuckled down to make steadying 67 runs for the fourth wicket It was more industrious than eyepopping but that was what India needed at that momentIn fact the entire alliance had just one boundary in it but India recovered to a good extend through them until Kohli 54 chopped one from Pat Cummins onto his stumpsHowever Rahul 66 continued to hold the innings together with a composed inningsCummins and his brigadeThrough the whole of this showpiece Pat Cummins the bowler was conspicuous by his absence Coming into this match the pacers runrate was above six and has taken 13 wickets from 10 matches But he would have liked to make a bigger impact and the New South Welshman chose the finest occasion to make his markAlso ReadA bitter pill to swallowHe got the big wickets of inform Kohli and Shreyas to keep India in check also bowled an economic spell Pacers Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood too helped him taking five wickets among them on a pitch that had very little for their type of bowlers using umpteen variationsThe spinners Adam Zampa Glenn Maxwell and Travis Head too chipped in choking runflow in the middle period They hardly allowed Indians to get the boundaries a vital part of Indias batting supremacy in the tournament so farThere were two periods of prolonged boundary drought in hosts innings the RahulKohli stand where India managed a lone four and in the period between 41st and 50th overs a phase when India managed just two fours through Mohammed Shami and Mohammed SirajWith agency inputs