India won a terrific victory at the MCG aided by a couple of fortunate decisions, terrific bowling and level headed batting during the modest run chase. It was India's first win chasing against Australia in Australia in 22 years, and only their 4th successful run chase against the Aussies in Australia in 15 opportunities.
There was a consistent threat about India's new ball attack with the white ball after a really long time, and it paid off. Australia came out blazing as usual, and for a while Mathew Hayden's front foot play threatened to force India into a bowling change. Ishant Sharma struggled with his run up early in his spell with the new ball, and the free hit rule came into play. Mathew Hayden revealed an interesting method of playing the free hits. Usually, his method is to stand outside his crease and aim to play off the front foot with a good stride. For the free hit, he stands deep inside his crease, and instead of assuming his normal stance, takes a baseball style stance with the bat almost fully at the top of the backlift. He got one four for the free hit, but the narrow minded aggression evident in Hayden's approach to the free hit, seemed to permeate all the other Australian batsmen. Ishant Sharma dismissed Ponting and Symonds, beating them with fine line and length outside off stump. Hayden himself went caught at the wicket attempting the hardest hit cover drive in the history of ODI cricket. Michael "pup" Clarke came down the wicket to Irfan Pathan with his side at 64/3 and found the orthodox mid wicket fielder instead of a neo-orthodox power-play boundary. At 64/4, Australia finally realized they were in trouble, and in the next 31 overs of their innings, they produced 6/95, to be bowled out for 159. Only Michael Hussey showed a willingness to graft and was stranded on 65 at the end.
In response, Tendulkar made an important 44 against the best of the Australian bowling and was probably lucky to survive against Stuart Clark on one occasion. He seems to have bought into this youth theory and in a throw back to his halcyon days fairly thumped three fours in an over off Brett Lee, the second of which was absolutely blasted. He will try and tell you till he's blue in the face that he was merely playing the ball on its merit, but this is a much more interesting narrative. The introspective, careful Tendulkar giving way to the carefree master blaster. He did to Lee what Hayden did to Sharma. He fell to a soft dismissal, the nature of which indicated that Ponting's prophecy that the wicket would slow up considerably in the 2nd innings of the match was absolutely accurate. Tendulkar had done enough in the context of the run chase, but with the wicket becoming less friendly for run scoring, at 97/4 chasing 159, India might have considered themselves only halfway to their target. Yuvraj Singh's poor run continued and it was left to the captain and the much discussed Rohit Sharma to shepherd the run chase. They played and missed, but as with everything else that had passed earlier in the game, they had the rub of the green. They also added to it with some of their own commonsense, which as Dhoni revealed later was to wait for the 5th bowler. In doing so they conceded the opportunity to gain a bonus point.
That was the characteristic of this win - prudence. There was no maverick individual brilliance. All the bowlers bowled quite well, there was no weak link anywhere - save Yuvraj Singh's batting. The south paw who has been one of the world's finest ODI batsmen in the past two years, will have to think long and hard about his batting and make sure that he turns the corner in Australia. The fact that his fielding no longer stands out as much as it once did in the Indian ODI side will not be lost on him or the selectors. This series will test the young indian middle order like little else in the world. They will have to play the pace of Lee, the unorthodoxy of Malinga, the cunning of Vaas and the greatness of Murali. Anybody who comes out of this series with an average of 40, will be a really good batsman.
Noticeably absent today was any over the top aggression. The only display came from Ishant Sharma who was quite fired up when Hayden was dismissed - a reaction to Hayden's aggravating mixture of awesome strokeplay and aw-shucks mis-strokes i guess. Sreesanth was almost philosophical, and when he got the 9th wicket, didn't even celebrate.
Much has been said about M S Dhoni. All i will say is that a new team is being built in Australia this month. They will almost certainly lose some games, and hopefully win a few more. The batting line up may yet be found out some players may fall away. But this is not Ganguly's team being led by Dhoni. Neither is it Dravid's team. It is Dhoni's team.
Round One to the Indian selectors....