By RAHUL BANERJI
Melbourne
Twen ty20 world champions India were handed a nine-wicket hammering by World Cup winners Australia in their one-off Twenty20 International before a near full house at the Melbourne Cricket Ground here on Friday.
Unable to make the transition from Test cricket, and with a bag full of new faces who have landed for the ensuing Commonwealth Bank tri-series that starts in Brisbane in two days time, Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s boys were handed a traumatic thrashing after they posted the second-lowest T20 total ever.
India’s embarrassing 74 in 17.3 overs improved by one run Kenya’s record of 73 set against New Zealand in last year’s ICC World Twenty20 Championship in South Africa and they were blown away as Australia raced home in just 11.2 overs.
“Our batsmen played too many shots too early,” skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni said later. “We just lost too many wickets to really recover. The guys in the middle forgot their roles, and when you let that happen against a team like Australia, you have to pay.
“I’m disappointed, not devastated. We have to take more responsibility. It was important that the guys played according to the situation but that didn’t happen today.”
Added stand-in Australia captain Michael Clarke, after Ricky Ponting pulled out with a painful back, “I’m speechless, not surprised at the way the game went. But we had done our homework well, studied all the Indian batsmen. “The execution of our plans was spot on. We put in a lot of work and this is the start of our journey to becoming the best in the world in Twenty20 cricket too,” he added. Jeered and booed non-stop by most of the 85,000 who had packed themselves into the MCG, India went three down in the first three overs and never recovered. Adam Gilchrist raced to a 22-ball 25 to set up the win opening alongside stand-in captain Michael Clarke, who finished with 37 off 36 balls with a six and a four. If the batting was pathetic, the work in the field was no better. Shantakumar Sreesanth went for 23 runs in his three overs while Harbhajan Singh, who was vigorously jeered and Irfan Pathan clashed in trying to take a Clarke skier off Ishant Sharma, the only Indian bowler to command any respect.
It was however, Praveen Kumar who got the lone wicket, Gilchrist lobbing a ball into Gautam Gambhir’s hands at long on in the eighth over. Appropriately, the winning run came off a Sharma wide ball.
Earlier, the Men in Blue collapsed like a house of cards to a combination of poor shot selection and tight bowling from Brett Lee and Nathan Bracken.
Virender Sehwag went for a non-existent run and found himself short in the very first over, and with so many new faces to follow, it was a jolt India could not recover from.
Between them, Lee and Bracken reduced India to 20/4 by the fourth over, and as a game, it was as good as over right there.
The only batsman who made it to double figures was Pathan (26, 30b) and the highest partnership was of 17 between him and Dhoni for the sixth wicket.
- Deccan Chronicle, Feb. 2, 2008
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