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There was an over where Harmeet Singh showed just how tough this pitch was. Harmeet is a slider, more than a spinner. Low arm action, smart, plays his angles. But on this wicket, he was prime Bishen Bedi.
The first two seemed slightly quicker, but one held while the other did not. The third one was flighted, but Hardik got to it. The next one spun and bounced, but slowly, and Hardik spooned it up and was out. The fifth ball had another one hold in the surface with extra bounce off the splice, but then the next ball slides low through at pace.
So in the space of an over you had bounce, spin, hold and skid. It is a wicket that takes you a while to work out. Unfortunately, by the time India did, only SKY was left.
When the ball was playing up, there was little doubt that Suryakumar Yadav was playing the ball under his eyes. That is what you need to do on a weird pitch that isn’t playing how you expect (SKY thought it was a batting wicket at the toss).
So India lost early wickets, but it was not through great deliveries. Well, not traditionally great.
This is wide and short against Abhishek Sharma, you should be picking concrete out of the ball when you give him this. But on this pitch, with the field set right, this ball stopped, and he bunted it up.
This is a wide long hop to Ishan Kishan, he probably should have tried to hit it squarer, but this ball deserved to be whacked. Instead, the slowness meant he mistimed it up to mid off.
Shivam Dube historically has some issues with the slower ball. But let’s be honest. That is not the issue here; look at the shape he gets into. That is because the ball has stopped on him, so what he thinks is an easy ball to pull just never arrives. It is slow, and it pops.
It wasn’t just the Indian batters; the USA lost their first three wickets to reaching wide for the ball or probing towards it. This was a surface where if you didn’t wait fort the ball to be close to you, trying to hit it hard meant a lofted ball to nowhere.
That is why SKY made runs. Early on, he realised that he needed to just wait for the ball. It is easy to say, and plan, but hard to execute. And he did it perfectly, yet no other batter managed it at all.
People will focus on the end of his knock, but that was when the USA lost two bowlers to injury and tried to bowl yorkers on a pitch you had to bowl slow cutters or into the surface on. The genius of his batting was realising that this pitch was different, and staying in long enough to work it out.
(Of course, when he did push at the ball, he did pop one up; USA just dropped it).
But it was nice of India to roll out an Associate-style wicket for the Americans.