The hosts India won their first bilateral ODI series in the new year after winning the three-match home ODI series against Australia on Sunday (19th January). Fighting the series on 1-1, India won the last game of this series by seven wickets at Bengaluru.
Australian limited-overs captain Aaron Finch again won the toss, and this time they decided to bat first. The visiting side scored 286/9 (50 overs) in the first innings. Chasing down the target, India lost three wickets and reached their goal in 47.3 overs (289/3).
Indian openers Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul provided a solid start with 69 runs partnership. Shikhar Dhawan didn’t come to bat due to his on-field injury who remained unavailable from the fifth over of first innings of the match. Though the opening partnership was good enough, the opener Rahul fell cheaply on 19 runs.
After that first wicket, Rohit Sharma and captain Virat Kohli took control of that innings. While Rohit completed his half-century in 56 balls, Kohli reached the same score in 61 balls. They had the 137 runs partnership for the second wicket. Rohit Sharma completed his 29th ODI century in 110 balls. After scoring 119 runs in 128 balls (8 fours and 6 sixes), Rohit lost his wicket.
Meanwhile, Virat Kohli handled the next situation along with Shreyas Iyer. Kohli-Iyer had the 68 runs partnership for the third wicket. Just 13 runs away from the victory, Kohli was bowled by Josh Hazlewood on 89 runs off 91 balls (8 fours). However, Shreyas Iyer and Manish Pandey completed that victory comfortably.
Indian bowlers were in control despite Steven Smith’s century
The visitors got a bad start as both the Australian openers fell cheaply. While David Warner scored just three runs, a horrific mix-up with Steven Smith cost the wicket of Aussie skipper Aaron Finch (19). The in-form batsmen Steven Smith and Marnus Labuschagne handled that situation very well and built up a strong partnership.
Both these batsmen completed their respective half-centuries and managed to register a century partnership for the third wicket. Labuschagne completed his maiden ODI half-century in 60 balls while Smith reached it earlier in 63 balls. After scoring 54 off 64 balls (5 fours), Labuschagne lost his wicket due to a stunning catch from the Indian captain Virat Kohli. Before that wicket, Smith and Labuschagne had 127 runs partnership for the third wicket.
Mitchell Starc promoted to the no.5 position, but he failed to get off the mark as Ravindra Jadeja picked both the wickets of Labuschagne and Starc in the same over.
Steven Smith then had another good partnership with the wicketkeeper-batsman Alex Carey (58 runs partnership for the fifth wicket). After Carey (35 runs) and Ashton Turner (4 runs) were dismissed, Smith soon completed his first ODI century in last three years. The right-handed Aussie batsman reached this three-figure in 117 balls.
Smith finally lost his wicket after scoring 131 runs off 132 balls (14 fours and only six). The lower-order batsmen didn’t score many runs in the death overs.
Indian pacer Mohammed Shami (4/63) bagged four wickets while Ravindra Jadeja (2/44) scalped two wickets. Navdeep Saini (1/65) and Kuldeep Yadav (1/62) also took one wicket each.
Earlier, Australia won the first match of this series at Mumbai by ten wickets while India won the second game at Rajkot by 36 runs.
Some crucial stats of the match:
i) Australian cricketer Steven Smith scored 131 runs. It was the third-highest individual ODI score for an Australian batsman against India in India. The top two in this list are 156 by George Bailey (at Nagpur on 30th October 2013) and 133* by Mark Waugh (at Pune on 28th March 2001).
ii) Rohit Sharma completed his 9,000 ODI runs in 217 innings. He became the third-fastest cricketer to complete 9,000 ODI runs after Virat Kohli (194 ODI innings) and AB de Villiers (205 ODI innings). While Rohit became the 20th batsman to score 9,000+ ODI runs, he became the seventh Indian to achieve this feat.
iii) Rohit Sharma became the fourth batsman to hit 29 ODI centuries. The first three batsmen in this list are Sachin Tendulkar (India; 49 centuries), Virat Kohli (India; 43 centuries) and Ricky Ponting (Australia and ICC World XI; 30 centuries).
iv) Rohit Sharma became the third batsman to hit eight ODI centuries against Australia. While Sachin Tendulkar (India) hit nine ODI centuries, Virat Kohli (India) has hit eight ODI centuries against Australia.
v) Virat Kohli became the fastest captain to score 5,000 ODI runs. While he took 82 innings as an ODI captain, the previous record-holder MS Dhoni (India) took 127 innings as an ODI captain to achieve this feat.