Perth : Steve Smith scored a brilliant 149 runs to steer Australia to an emphatic 5 wicket win over India in the first ODI at WACA . It was the highest run chase by any team here at the WACA in one day internationals . Smith’s knock overshadowed Rohit Sharma’s magnificent 171 runs . Australian batsmen toyed with India’s listless bowling attack , raising serious concerns for the forthcoming matches .
Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni decided to bat first on a flat WACA track . The visitors posted a commanding 309 runs , riding on an unbeaten century from Rohit Sharma ( 171 runs) and Virat Kohli ( 91 runs) . Both contributed 207 runs for the second wicket .
In reply, Smith, who faced 163 balls, added a staggering 242 runs for the third wicket with another former captain George Bailey (112) as the home team knocked off the runs with four balls to spare. While it was another heartbreaking end to a Rohit century that ended in a losing cause (his T20 hundred and ODI hundred against SA were scored in defeats), Australian skipper Smith again turned out to be India’s nemesis pacing his innings to perfection. Smith’s sequence of scores against the ‘Men In Blue’ across formats reads: 162 not out, 52 not out, 133, 28, 192, 14, 117, 71, 47, 105. It also turned out to be the highest successful run-chase at the WACA and the third highest in an ODI in Australia. Spinners fail to impress The Indian bowling attack looked completely out of depth as the Smith-Bailey duo never did anything extraordinary but still managed to hammer Umesh Yadav and co with monotonic regularity.
For India, debutant Barinder Sran (3/56) managed to create an impression with early breakthroughs but the other bowlers failed to join the party. Especially disappointing were India’s spin twins Ravichandran Ashwin (2/68 in 9 overs) and Ravindra Jadeja (0/61 in 9 overs) looked far from penetrative.
Aussie captain displayed exemplary footwork hitting 11 fours and 2 sixes en route his fifth ODI ton while Bailey’s third hundred had seven fours and two sixes. While Australia were 21 for two in the fifth over, things could have taken a different turn as Bailey looked to have gloved the first delivery he faced bowled by Sran. While Dhoni looked confident, Sran did not even go up with an appeal. Bailey’s reprieve really cost India, but a lack of DRS couldn’t be blamed for this defeat. Along with Smith, he went about rebuilding the innings patiently and kept the scorecard ticking, looking to set the stage for a grandstand finish. They brought up their 50-partnership in only 59 balls, and were particularly severe on the spinners. Rohit (0-11) had been introduced in the 12th over but that experiment didn’t work out. Jadeja proved to be expensive, but it was Ashwin who disappointed the most, leaking runs in his first spell. The Tamil Nadu tweaker, who had a lot of success on the designer tracks at home, was hit for six boundaries and two sixes. Both Bhuvneshwar Kumar (0-42) and Umesh Yadav (0-54) went wicketless .
Earlier the partnership between Virat and Rohit was the second highest for India against Australia in the ODIs surpassing the previous best of 199 set by Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman in Indore back in 2001. Rohit crossed the 150-mark off 155 balls, and in doing so, crossed 1000 ODI runs against Australia in 19 innings, one less than Sachin Tendulkar.
Courtesy : PTI