Dhoni, Gambhir lead India through a thrilling chase

By Jatin Thakkar and Soham Sarkhel 

Australia 269/8; India 270/6 in 49.4 overs (India won by 4 wickets)

The scorecard of the match is here.

India finally for the first time on this tour managed to beat a Michael Clarke led Australian team after they successfully chased down a stiff target of 270 runs with four wickets in hand. The win definitely spices up the race for the top spot in the points table with both Australia and India now having suffered a loss each. However Australia still find themselves placed at the top of the table on virtue of their bonus point over India in the first ODI of the CB Series.

Overall, India’s Team IMPACT in the match was 1.77 as compared to Australia’s 1.67.

All figures between 0 and 5 unless otherwise mentioned.

AUSTRALIA:

INDIA:

*Figures in the brackets represent the players’ Match IMPACT when it is not restricted between 0 and 5, as it is in a career context.

Observations:
Poking, shrivelling, edging are generally the terms one would come to recognise Gautam Gambhir with in this Australian summer but in the fourth ODI at Adelaide he finally managed to lay to rest all the aforementioned terms as he supervised the Indian chase beautifully by scoring a match winning knock of 92 runs in 111 balls (Batting IMPACT 4.76). He played the sheet anchor’s role in a demanding chase as other Indian batsmen scored and fell around him to produce the highest-impact performance in the match.

MS Dhoni started off in an extremely mild manner, scoring extremely slowly and ended up pushing the required run rate above 8 at a point of time. However, his unbeaten 44 in 58 balls (Batting IMPACT 2.62) saw India through the chase successfully to produce the second-highest Batting IMPACT performance for India after Gambhir.

Suresh Raina (Batting IMPACT 1.97) and Gautam Gambhir both steadied the Indian innings and also managed to log Partnership IMPACT during the match. Gambhir’s fall soon after to McKay mandated skipper MS Dhoni’s arrival to the crease.

Virender Sehwag again threatened to explode only to self implode in his typical fashion (Batting IMPACT 0.86). Virat Kohli (Batting IMPACT 0.44) who is known for his chasing skills failed to impress and fell to a poor shot early in his innings. Rohit Sharma (Batting IMPACT 1.19) again flattered to deceive and got out playing an ugly swipe off the bowling of Ryan Harris.

Earlier in the day, Ricky Ponting again continued his succession of failures in the CB Series and perished early to Vinay Kumar. Even though Clarke and Warner managed to provide Australia a stable start the main highlight of the Aussie innings was the performance of the debutant Peter Forrest. His knock of 66 runs (Batting IMPACT 2.79) was bettered only by David Hussey’s knock of 72 runs (Batting IMPACT 3.59) and together also had a Partnership IMPACT in the match.

In the bowling department, the spinners were unhelpful and both Ravindra Jadeja and R Ashwin had a Bowling IMPACT of less than 1. Umesh Yadav in his first match of the series performed tremendously well and managed to garner a Bowling IMPACT of 2.83, the highest among all the Indian bowlers. Vinay Kumar (Bowling IMPACT 2.34) also picked up two wickets but was a touch expensive for his efforts.

For Australia, Clint McKay (Bowling IMPACT 3.72) was the pick of the Australian bowlers with his three wicket haul whereas Xavier Doherty came back well during his death overs spell to end up with a Bowling IMPACT of 2.40. The other Australian bowlers especially Ryan Harris and Mitchell Starc performed miserably and failed to generate appropriate Bowling IMPACT in the match.

For more information, go to www.impactindexcricket.com.