Once India lost three wickets with not even 30 on the board, they were pushed to the backfoot by the Australians and the visitors never really recovered from that setback, felt captain Shubman Gill.

India had a wobbly start to their innings, were 25/3 and were scoring a sorry rate of about three runs per over. They lost the top three of Rohit Sharma (8), Shubman Gill (10) and Virat Kohli (0) with almost nothing on the board.

India managed 136/9 in the 26-overs-a-side rain-curtailed match. The target was not daunting and the home side cantered to it in 21.1 overs and seven wickets to spare.

Gill, while admitting that the early blows hurt his team, insisted that they still put up a competitive show by taking the match “deep”.

“Never easy, when you lose three wickets in the Powerplay, you’re always trying to play catch-up. There were a lot of learnings and positives as well,” Gill said after the match.

“Defending 130 (DRS target 131) in 26 odd overs, we took the game pretty deep, so we’re satisfied with that,” the skipper added.

The 26-year-old also hopes to gain strength from the massive support that the Indian team receives from its fans in Australia.

“We’re very fortunate that wherever we play, fans turn up in huge numbers. Hopefully, they’ll be able to cheer us on at Adelaide as well,” said Gill.

This was India’s first defeat in ODIs in 2025, bringing their run of eight successive wins to an end.

‘Bit of a challenge’

Gill’s Australian counterpart, Mitchell Marsh, acknowledged it was a tricky chase, but lauded his team for finishing the job successfully.

“It (ball) was swinging around a little bit. We knew that was going to be the case for both teams, so a little bit of a challenge to get through there. Proud of the way our young guys came out and took the game on and got us over,” said Player of the Match Marsh, who played an innings of 46 not out in his team’s chase.

Marsh praised Josh Philippe (37 off 29 balls) for making the chase “look easy”.