It was initially the moment that was seen as one of the lowlights of Australia’s then-stuttering Cricket World Cup campaign.
In the tournament-opener against India, Australia had the home side 3-2 while defending a lowly total of 200 after dismissing Rohit Sharma, Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer for ducks.
India could’ve been 4-20 when Mitch Marsh spilled an easy catch off Virat Kohli’s bat. Kohli went on to score 85 in a six-wicket win for India. The home side may have won the battle, but Australia left the ground with a key lesson that would allow them to go on to win the war.
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After beating India in the World Cup final, Australian coach Andrew McDonald explained how the moments following Marsh’s drop proved to be the basis for Pat Cummins’ decision to bowl first after winning the toss in the final weeks later.
“There were a lot of pieces that were moving late,” McDonald told SEN of a meeting between he, Cummins and head of analytics, Tom Bodie.
“Once we got back from the ground we were clear on the team and we communicated that. Then the last piece was really just providing options for Pat at the toss.
“It was always going to be a discussion point. We called Tom Bodie into the coaches’ room and we just had an hour or an hour and a half just hypothesising about what the black soil wicket in Ahmedabad would look like versus the red soil in other areas (of India).
“We probably drilled it back to the Chennai game (against India). It’s a black soil wicket in Chennai and we felt like that might be the closest to what we were about to encounter. There was some good information around chasing runs at that venue also.
“In the Chennai game, after we had that opportunity which Mitch Marsh put down off Josh Hazlewood, we felt a little bit helpless and we didn’t feel as though we could impact at night with the ball.”
Winning the toss and sending India in to bat seemed like a suicidal choice at the time, but McDonald said he and his team had “compelling” evidence to do so.
“Probably that final piece (was) where we went down to the ground and it was quite dewy,” he said.
“I think bowling during the day time allowed our bowling unit to function. I think a lot of the time we look at the batting unit and what the batting should do, so maybe this is the lens of a bowling captain as well, asking, ‘How are we going to set our bowling unit up to succeed?’.
“I think all of it, you’re not beholden to what happened in the past. Runs on the board in a final, yeah that’s nice, but runs on the board in a final against India on a surface that’s not allowing your bowling attack to do what it needs to do isn’t the way to go.”
There was significant doubts over whether Australia could win the World Cup when it started the tournament in a 0-2 hole after losses to India and South Africa, but McDonald said the team’s confidence never wavered.
”The view from the inside was that we’d played against two really good opponents that were probably better placed at that point in time in the tournament,” he said.
“There was a get-together post-game (after the South Africa loss), but that was just to reinforce that we were on the right path and let’s stick to it and believe in what we’ve set out to achieve.
“It was really doubling down. I think we’ve had moments like that when we were 0-2 in India in the Test series as well, and you bring the group together and it’s really about reiterating what you set out to do.
“If you start to pivot at that point in time I think that can create panic in the group and it also means that potentially your planning has been well off.
“At 0-2 in a nine-match round game stage of a World Cup, it’s hardly time to start throwing the baby out with the bath water.
“It was just a time to say, ‘OK, let’s get moving’.”