Australia missed a chance for an lbw review against Kusal Perera in the tenth over after having burnt one on the very first ball of the innings in their clash against Sri Lanka at the Ekana Stadium in Lucknow today (October 16).

The Australia-Sri Lanka encounter got off to an action-packed start. Having won the toss, Sri Lanka chose to bat first. Mitchell Starc, one of the most devastating new-ball bowlers in ODI history, produced a beauty first up to Pathum Nissanka – a rapid, inswinging near-yorker that he somehow kept out.

Australia felt that the ball had struck Nissanka’s pads first and went up for a review, only for it to be wasted as replays showed that the ball had just hit the bat. Each team is allowed two reviews per innings. Australia’s first-ball burning of a review meant it would have put them under pressure to use their only remaining review judiciously. And it came back to haunt them nine overs later.

In the tenth over the innings, bowled by Glenn Maxwell, Perera went back to a flatter delivery on middle and leg and was struck on the pads as he tried to glance it towards square leg. Maxwell and Co went up in appeal but were denied by the umpire.

To the naked eye, it looked like the ball might have been sliding down the leg side, or at best, would have clipped the leg stump. That, coupled with the fact that they had only review left with more than 40 overs to play, meant that Australia didn’t go up for a review.

Replays, however, soon confirmed that the ball would have indeed crashed into Perera’s leg stump and had they gone for a review, Australia would have been rewarded with their first breakthrough of the innings.

Sri Lanka’s score at that point was 51-0. As it turned out, at the time of writing, they have reached 84-0 from 15 overs with Perera batting on 36 off 44 and Nissanka on 42 off 46.

How costly will the first-ball review, and the ensuing non-review of Perera will be, remains to be seen.

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