The Bangalore pitch turned out to be a nightmare for the bowlers, particularly R Vinay Kumar, who conceded 102 runs in 9 overs, with boundaries and sixes raining from both sides. However, India had the last laugh, as they beat Australia by 57 runs and won the seven-match ODI series 3-2.
Riding high on Rohit Sharma’s 209 (158 balls), Dhawan’s 60 and Dhoni’s 62 off 38 balls, India posted 383/6 in 50 overs. Rohit broke several records such as third double hundred in ODIs after Sachin Tendulkar (200*) and Virender Sehwag (219), 1,000 runs in 2013, highest individual score against Australia and most number of sixes (16) in an ODI innings.
Chasing a victory target of 384, Australia started on a slow note and keplosing wickets too, but some batsmen produced brilliant performance to put thchase on track. At one stage, they were 138/6, but Haddin (40), Glenn Maxwell (60 off 22 balls) and Shane Watson (49 off 22 balls) made the difference. Maxwell scored his fifty off just 18 balls and equalled the record for fastest fifty by any Australian.
Support Independent Journalism? Keep us live.
After that, it was the turn of James Faulkner, who hit the fastest hundred by any Australian, when he reached the century off just 57 balls. He added 115 runs (88 balls) for the 9th wicket along with Clint McKay, which threatened to take the game away from India. They started at 211/8 and nobody even imagined that Australia would reach 326 from that position in such a high-voltage game.
Australia finally bowled out for 326 in 45.1 overs, as Faulkner was the last man out at 116 off 73 balls with 11 boundaries and 6 sixes. Glenn Maxwell and Shane Watson hit 6 sixes each. A total of 38 sixes were scored in the match, which was a world record. For India, Jadeja and Sami took three wickets each, while Ashwin took two wickets. There was no prize guessing the ‘Man of the Match’ award – it was Rohit Sharma.
Rohit also won the ‘Man of the Series’ award for scoring 491 runs in the five matches of the series, which is a world record in a bilateral series. Geroge Bailey was the close contender, as he scored 478 runs in six matches.
Comments are closed.