Praveen Kumar and Harbhajan Singh may not have got India that impossible win in the first ODI between India and Australia at Vadodara. But they perhaps saved India blushes on the day.
johnson ponting
When lost their seventh wicket for 201 in the fortieth over, it looked like game over for team India. However, Australia took the foot off the pedal and the Indian tail grabbed the opportunity with both hands!
Just when one was going to say that India do not have a tail the likes of which Australia boasts with Brett Lee and Mitchell Johnson, the two bowlers who copped the flak on the day redeemed themselves with the bat.
From a position where getting ninety runs in the last sixty balls of the match would have been considered impossible for a team that had lost all its top order batsmen, India managed to get within four runs of a win!
Harbhajan and Praveen Kumar scored the highest eighth wicket partnership for an India Australia contest, making eighty-four runs off just fifty-seven balls at a time when India needed twice the number of runs off balls remaining.
The duo managed to bring the asking rate down from twenty-nine runs in the final two overs to just nine runs in the final six balls.
India appeared to be chasing down the target of 293 rather well, riding on Gautam Gambhir's sixty-eight backed up by Mahendra Singh Dhoni's thirty-four and Virat Kohli's thirty runs. But it was the batting powerplay that instead of yielding runs, India requiring them at eight runs an over at that point, actually resulted int he loss of three wickets - that of Suresh Raina, the Indian captain, and Ravindra Jadeja.
While Virender Sehwag and Sachin Tendulkar sounded the ominous warning that the target would not derail the Indian team with fear, it was Gambhir who held the match on an even keel, first in a partnership with Kohli and then, with Dhoni before Gambhir fell to Mitchell Johnson in the thirty-fourth over with India's score on four down for 167 that turned the match in Australia's favour.
Ind Aus Honour Series ODI 1 Half Time: Australia Chalk up 292 at Vadodara!
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