India down Australia after months of hard work

The Indian cricket team finally gets to breathe a sigh of relief with a commanding win over the mighty Australians in the fourth ODI of the Commonwealth Bank series. India won by four wickets, a game which they should have won by a bigger margin. Australia
won the toss and chose to bat at the Adelaide Oval on Sunday, February 12.

The home side rested Michael Hussey and drafted Peter Forrest for his debut game. Ricky Ponting was asked to open the innings in place of Matthew Wade, who was asked to bat down the order as part of experimentation policy. Indians dropped Sachin Tendulkar
and Praveen Kumar from the starting XI, bringing back Gautam Gambhir and Umesh Yadav into the squad.

It was another failure for both Ponting and Warner, who have not been at their best in the ODI series so far. The Aussie ship was steadied by the reliable middle order of skipper, Michael Clarke, debutant Peter Forrest, and all-rounders, David Hussey and
Daniel Christian.

Forrest smoked a breezy fifty on his debut, eventually finishing up with 66 from 83 balls including five fours and two massive sies. Inform, David Hussey, scored a brilliant 72 of 76 balls while the other contributions of 38 and 39 came from Clarke and Christian
respectively. The Kangaroos registered 269 runs from their allotted 50 overs at a rate of 5.38 runs per over.

Yadav and Vinay Kumar grabbed two wickets each while Zaheer Khan picked up the other wicket. Rest of the three were run-outs. In reply, India needed to register their highest score while chasing in Australia and got off to a flying start, courtesy, Virendar
Sehwag and Gambhir. Sehwag managed just 20 runs with the help of three boundaries before perishing in the 10^th over.

Kohli was looking dangerous before gifting his scalp in the 19^th over to Clint McKay. He made 18. Gambhir and Rohit Sharma steadied the Indian ship before Sharma lost his head and the wicket when India were cruising at 166/2. Sharma made 33. Suresh
Raina made a quick fire 38 of 30 balls before Mahinder Singh Dhoni sealed the match in his team’s favour with a calm and collective 44 of 58 balls that included only one six.

McKay picked up three wickets while two were picked up by Xavier Doherty and one came in the bag of Ryan Harris. Gambhir was declared Man of the Match for his well compiled and match winning 92 runs of 111 balls.

On the points table, Australia are on top with 9 points, followed by India with 8, while Srilanka are yet to open their account in the competition.

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Posted by Taha Habib on Feb 13 2012. Filed under Pakistan, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry