7th ODI, India Vs Australia

Indian players displayed exemplary poise and withstood the tension which could easily make even the nerves of steel feel dizzy to pull off an incredible 2-wicket win against Australians in the last ODI of the seven-match series played at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on Wednesday, October 17, 2007.

With the Indian tail slashing Australians brutally, it was Murali Kartik all the way, ripping apart Australian batting line-up to produce a career-best figure of 6/27, only to make a match-winning contribution with the bat later in the day to secure India a historic win. Early in the day, Australia were off to one of their worst starts in recent times, with Michael Clarke bowled dead in the front of the stumps by Zaheer Khan on the very first ball of the Australian innings.

Ricky Ponting nevertheless managed to salvage some of the pride, building up a respectable partnership of 58 runs for the second wicket before Harbhajan Singh caught Gilchrist off an excellent piece of bowling by Pathan. What followed is history, as Murali Kartik claimed the wickets of Brad Hodge and Andrew Symonds on successive balls in the 20th over, with the latter one going out for nought, even though he was awarded Man of the Series title later in the day. Rest was mincemeat, as Murali Kartik would love to call it, and so would every Indian cricketing fan, with Kartik bowling a dream spell to claim 6 wickets for 27 runs bundling out the Australians for one of their lowest cricket scores of 193 in 41.3 overs. Chasing a never so imposing target of 194, India were also off to a disastrous start, all credits to Johnson making early inroads with the wickets of Ganguly and Kartik for ducks and the Indian scoreboard read 2 wickets for 8 runs.

With Tendulkar again looking set to play a salvaging innings, the Indian nightmare returned with Brett Lee claiming his prized wicket in the 11th over itself. With Nathan Bracken decimating all hopes of an Indian fightback, let alone a win, with his dangerous swing and seam proving too good to handle for Yuvraj and Dhoni, India was down to 6 wickets for 64 runs, when the ball started playing to the tune of Robin Uthappa who contributed a superb 47 runs off 59 balls with good support from Harbhajan Singh on the other end. Withstanding the onslaught of Australian bowling Robin Uthappa and Harbhajan Singh went ahead to build a solid 65-run partnership to give India an outside chance to pull off an improbable win before the Indian camp was drowned in grim silence with Uthappa being picked by Australians making India 7 wickets down for 129 runs followed by Harbhajan's wicket at the score of 143.

The most distant hopes of a victory were but a dream now, even as the proverbial Indian phoenix chose the very moment to rise out of the ashes with Zaheer Khan and Murali Kartik building up a match-winning partnership of 52 runs for the 9th wicket and remained not out to rejoice in the moment on the field. The cricketing fans were on the edge of their seats as Team India inched closer to a nail-biting victory in the last few overs spelling out in bold letters the arrival of the new-age cricketing champions to the reigning Australians.

India ended up 4-2 down in the series with Australia claiming the Future Cup 2007 and Australian Andrew Symonds being chosen as the Man of the Series with India managing to win the psychological Cup with a brave closing win against Australians and Murali Kartik being declared Man of the Match. All the eyes are now focused on the Twenty20 match between the two teams scheduled for Saturday with big hopes of India coming up with another excellent performance against Australians.

Last Updated on 24 August 2012