India v Australia 2017, 4th ODI: Who Said What

The series was lost but not everything. Steve Smith & Co. might be down but they do live with the true Australian spirit. They fight till the last breath no matter if the result goes in their favour or against. While the Indian team could afford to experiment in this game with a 3-0 lead Australia had to win this one to ensure they weren’t staring at a whitewash. And they put up an effort good enough to trump the Indians who were on a 9-match winning streak.

It was the opening stand worth 231 runs that gave them a stupendous platform to build the innings on and post a total too big for the Indians to chase. David Warner and Aaron Finch played fearless cricket and played some mind blowing shots. Warner’s 124 and Finch’s 94 ensured Australia managed to post 334/5 on the board despite losing three quick wickets in the second half of the innings.

India in their reply got off to a fitting start with Ajinkya Rahane and Rohit Sharma almost replicating what their counterparts did. But Rahane couldn’t convert his half century into a bigger score and Rohit was unlucky to be involved in yet another mix-up with Virat Kohli. The skipper himself was guilty of attempting a false shot against Nathan Coulter-Nile as he deflected the ball back onto his stumps to be dismissed in the exact same manner as the 2nd ODI.

The Indian middle order tried their best with Hardik Pandya, Kedar Jadhav and Manish Pandey playing decent knocks but they got out without giving the chase a conclusion. With too much left to be done in too little time, MS Dhoni arrived at the crease amidst a huge roar but couldn’t take the team home. And in the end, Team India fell 21 runs short of the target as Australia won their first ODI after 8 matches and the series now stands 3-1.

Virat was happy with their bowling effort to restrict the Aussies under 350 after the kind of start they got. He also said that they were pretty much in the game for the most part of the chase while failing to get another big partnership after the opening stand limited them from getting over the line.

Virat Kohli said:

“At the 30-over mark they were going pretty strong, I thought it would be a great effort to restrict them to under 350, and we did that. We were pretty optimistic. Got a pretty good opening partnership, but we needed one big partnership, chasing 330, which we didn’t get.

People have off days. Umesh and Shami bowled well, they were getting the ball to reverse in their second spells. The spinners won’t always have good days. Sometimes you have to sit back and say the opposition played well. The only respite for the fast bowlers was taking the pace off the ball – it was pretty close to the old Bangalore wicket.”

For his magnificent hundred, in his 100th ODI appearance for Australia, Warner was awarded the Man of the Match.

“Feels fantastic. Put a great smile on our face, winning this game tonight. It’s been tough for us on the road lately. A few misdemeanours back in the day, so didn’t get my chance [on the previous tour]. Getting to play in India, and play my 100th ODI, is pretty special. Winning, you gain some momentum, and the way the guys played with the bat today was fantastic.”

The Australian captain had a broad smile on his face proud of his team’s effort and why not, they almost forgot the taste of victory with the dry run they’ve had in international cricket of late and this should certainly give the team confidence going into the next match and the T20I series that follows.

Steven Smith said:

“Nice to get a win in. Thought Aaron Finch and David Warner were spectacular up top. They hit the boundaries when they wanted to, and set us up to get 330. Thought we were having one of our little collapses, but Peter Handscomb batted well to get us up to 330. I thought we were a little bit too wide with the new ball, could have been straighter, but the bowlers pulled it back nicely towards the back end.”