On a bright sunny Sunday, India came out as better side at The Oval against the five times champion Australia. This was India’s only fourth win in World Cup against the Kangaroos.
After winning the toss, Virat Kohli decided to bat first on a batting-friendly track. The Indian openers, Rohit and Dhawan, gave India a moderate start without losing any wicket in the first 15 overs. Dhawan opened up a little bit after the first ten overs and reached the fifty in 18th over while Rohit reached in 21st over. India lost Rohit (57) in the 23rd over when the score was 127.
Dhawan was then joined by captain Virat Kohli, who also took a while to settle down, but Dhawan was at his freaking best by that time. He started milking the Australian bowling attack and reached his 17th ODI hundred and third of the World Cup.
In between all this, two moments were captured by the camera involving Kohli and Zampa. First was when Virat Kohli asked the crowd to stop booing and applaud the Australian cricket, Steve Smith. That moment became the best part of the day, and everyone praised Kohli’s grand gesture after the match.
The other incident was related to Adam Zampa who was found doing a suspicious activity during the Indian innings when he found rubbing the ball too often.
Back to Indian innings, Dhawan (117) lost his wicket to Starc at 220 with 13 overs still to bowl. India promoted the hard-hitting swashbuckling Hardik Pandya at number 4. Kohli and Pandya added 81 runs in less than ten overs. With some blistering blows in the end by Dhoni, Kohli and KL Rahul, India reached a score of 352.
Watch: Indian innings (batting highlight)
There were some jaw-dropping shots from India’s batsmen today. Watch them here ⬇ #INDvAUS #CWC19 #TeamIndia pic.twitter.com/FaHcIlEd3d
— ICC (@ICC) June 9, 2019
No team has ever chased a target of more than 330 in the World Cup. Australia had to beat the World Cup record to win the match. They started extremely slow, especially David Warner, who took ages to score runs. Warner played 50 dots ball during his painstaking innings (56 off 84) before holding out at deep mid-wicket. Steve Smith and Khawaja added 69 runs for the 3rd wicket, giving some hope to their fans. But Bhuvneshwar completely shifted the match in India’s favour when dismissed Smith and Stoinis in the same over.
Alex Carey, completed the formality for Australia, he remained not out on 55, as Australia lost the match by 36 runs. For India, Bumrah and Bhuvenshwar took three wickets each.
Watch: Australian Innings (Fall of wickets)
WATCH: The wickets that kept pegging Australia back in their massive chase#INDvAUS #CWC19 #TeamIndia pic.twitter.com/Mq1lNWhTDj
— ICC (@ICC) June 9, 2019
Stats
- India’s 352 for 5 is the highest World Cup total by any team against Australia. The previous best was 312 by Sri Lanka in Sydney, 2015.
- 16th century stand for the opening pair of Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan. Now only one opening pair, Sourav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar, has put on more 100-stands in the ODIs (21).
- Virat Kohli (82) scored his 50th ODI fifty. He is the 7th Indian to score 50 half centuries in ODIs. The other six are – Tendulkar (94), Dravid (83), Ganguly (72), Dhoni (71), Azhar (58) and Yuvraj (52).
- Shikhar Dhawan has scored his 17th ODI hundred and 3rd in World Cup. Only Tendulkar (6) and Ganguly (4) have scored more hundreds for India in the World Cup.
- Rohit Sharma reached 2000 runs in ODI against Australia during his knock of 57. He is only the 3rd batsmen to score 2000 or more runs against Australia in ODI. He is the quickest to reach this record (37 innings). The previous record was held by Tendulkar who took 40 innings to achieve this feat.
- Dhoni (27) and Pandya (48) scored at a strike rate of 192.85 and 177.77, respectively. Dhoni is on 3rd while Pandya is on 6th in the list of highest strike rates in an innings for India in World Cup (min 25 runs).
- This is the first time Australia lost a match while chasing in the world cup since 1999.
- David Warner scored his slowest ODI fifty – in 77 balls.
