Indian cricket team came up with one of its worst ever performances and lost the 5th ODI against Australia by as much as 9 wickets at Reliance Stadium in Vadodara on Thursday.
Indian skipper MS Dhoni won the toss to begin with and chose to bat but everything else went against India even as Brett Lee struck in the first over itself and Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly made their way back to the pavilion without any score to their credit.
The things took a turn for the worse when Yuvraj, while still trying to overcome early jitters, when Johnson struck and Yuvraj was brilliantly caught by Adam Gilchrist in the 4th over which was soon followed by loss of Uthappa's wicket. In came MS Dhoni, Indian skipper who still held hope of India making it right back into the game by building a partnership with Tendulkar, but it was not to be, as Johnson strikes again and India are 33 for 4 wickets.
Wickets kept falling and the only respectable partnership of 41 runs was created by Zaheer Khan and RP Singh for the last wicket before India was bundled out for a meagre 148 runs in 39.4 overs.
Things looked completely different with Australians, as they started their innings in a very comfortable manner and got off to a flying start.
From Indian side, only Harbhajan Singh could claim the wicket of Hayden, which however could not make any impact on the Australins as they continued their run feast and finished at 149 for 1 wicket in 25.5 overs with Ricky Ponting and Adam Gilchrist scoring an unbeaten 39 and 79 runs respectively.
The loss made sure that India has no chance left of winning the series, all that is left is to win the rest of the 2 matches and square the seven-match ODI Series against Australia, if possible, which again, would take quite an effort on the part of Indians.
Last Updated on 24 August 2012
