Twitter Reactions: Mitchell Marsh's all-round show guides Australia to an emphatic win against New Zealand

Australia takes 1-0 lead against New Zealand in ODI series.

By Jasvinder Singh

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Australian team
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Australian team. (Photo by SAEED KHAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Australia hosted New Zealand for the first game of the three-match ODI series at SCG in Sydney. The majority of the fans would have expected it to be an enthralling encounter but that was not the case. The Kiwi side that whitewashed the Men in Blue in the recently-concluded ODI series had to face annihilating defeat against the hosts by a margin of 71 runs.

Earlier, Australia skipper Aaron Finch won the toss and elected to bat first. The hosts had expected that their openers to come out with some astonishing performances and they lived up to the expectations as they stitched an opening partnership of 124 runs.

David Warner and Aaron Finch looked in full flow with the bat although they got off to a slow start on a difficult track at Sydney Cricket Ground. The duo slowly knitted their partnership against strong bowling lineup of New Zealand. Warner scored 67 runs off 88 balls whereas Finch mustered 60 runs off 75 balls.

New Zealand batting line-up collapses against Aussie bowlers

Warner became the first player to get dismissed in the match. The left-hander attempted a pull on a quick short-pitched delivery off Lockie Ferguson but he failed to get his timing right and was caught at mid-on by Ish Sodhi. Soon, Finch got stumped by Tom Latham off Mitchell Santner.

It looked like the bowlers had rescued their team, who had managed to grab wickets of Steve Smith (14 runs), D’Arcy Short (5 runs) quite early. But a magnificent fifty by Marnus Labuschagne threw water on all the hard work of Kiwi bowlers. And, Australia managed a total of 258 runs for a loss of seven wickets in stipulated 50 overs. Ish Sodhi turned out to be the best bowler for his team, who took the wickets of Short, Marsh and Carey.

Coming onto the chase, the visitors got off to a poor start as they lost their in-form opener, Henry Nicholls for a team score of 28. He was struggling from the beginning against Aussie pacer and was finding it difficult to get the ball on the peach spot of his willow. He knicked the ball off Josh Hazelwood and was caught brilliantly by Alex Carey behind the stumps. Soon, Kane Williamson, the skipper of New Zealand departed after scoring 19 runs as he failed to judge the googly bowled by Adam Zampa.

Even, Ross Taylor (4 runs) and James Neesham (8 runs) couldn’t manage to click good knocks with the bat and were sent to back to the pavilion quite early. All the hopes went down to Colin de Grandhomme (25 runs) and Tom Latham (38 runs), who stitched a partnership of 51 runs. But after their departure, things went from bad to worse for the Kiwi side.

The visitors miserably failed to play a total of 50 over and got out for a score of 187 runs in 41 overs. Mitchell Marsh and Pat Cummins took three-fer in the match that turned out to be the main reason behind the emphatic win of Australia. Marsh was also awarded Man of the Match for contributing 27 runs with the bat and registering brilliant bowling figures of 3/29.

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