Opener Rohit Sharma has lauded his side’s winning effort. Team India beat Australia by seven wickets to finish the 5-match series by a 4-1 margin. This was the first occasion when India managed to get better of their Australian rivals by a margin of 3 wins in a bilateral ODI series.
The victory was sweet and post celebrations, the ‘Man of the Match’ award winner, posted on Twitter to praise his team’s winning attitude.
He wrote: “Every game we have ever won, we won in our heads first. That’s the quality of this team.”
https://twitter.com/ImRo45/status/914737919688032256
Sharma culminated the series with a century to his credit, scoring 125 off just 109 balls including 11 fours and five sixes. His knock smoothly paved the victory path for India. After electing to bat first Australia, managed to post a functional total of 243/3 in 50 overs. In response, India faced no trouble in getting past the winning line as Rohit Sharma provided the perfect head start and almost finished the job single-handedly.
This century was his 14th ODI century of his career and 6th against Australia, the joint highest by a batsman in ODIs. Sachin Tendulkar holds a record with nine times while West Indies great Desmond Haynes had six.
Last night’s game also saw Sharma complete the 6,000 runs mark. He achieved this feat in just 162 innings and had become the ninth Indian batsman to accomplish this distinction in ODIs. Also, he has also managed to reach this milestone as the third quickest among Indian players standing only behind Virat Kohli (136 innings) and Sourav Ganguly (147 innings).
In the first two games of the series, Sharma failed to convert his starts into big scores. He could muster only 28 and seven at Chennai and Kolkata respectively before getting back his rhythm with knocks of 71 and 65 in the following two ODIs at Indore and Bengaluru.
With this win, India continued their dominance over Australia. The two sides had already met last year in the Border – Gavaskar Trophy which India pocketed 3-1.