1st ODI: India beat Australia by 6 wickets
Hyderabad, Mar 2: Mahendra Singh Dhoni took a chase deep for the umpteenth time but it needed Kedar Jadhav's street smartness to get India back on winning track as they beat Australia by six wickets in the first ODI here Saturday.
India reached the target in 48.2 overs, riding on a 141-run unconquered stand between Kedar (81 no, 87 balls) and Dhoni (59 no off 72 balls), to take a 1-0 lead in the five-match series.
India had lost the two preceding T20 Internationals.
Clad in their brand new jerseys, the successful chase of 237 was a throwback to the good old 90's when Ajay Jadeja and Robin Singh would hunt down those sub 250 totals in exciting finishes.
However, it shouldn't be lost in isolation that India made a heavy weather of an easy target on a not so difficult wicket.
As has been the case these days, Dhoni was once again unable to rotate the strike at the start of his innings and the onus was on Kedar to hit the boundaries after they joined hands at 99 for four with skipper Virat Kohli (44, 45 balls) and his deputy Rohit Sharma (37, 66 balls) back in the hut.
While Dhoni hit six fours and a six off Nathan Coulter-Nile, it was the diminutive Maharashtra man, who did the hard yards of finding the gaps.
Be it the inside out boundaries off Adam Zampa or those cheeky tennis ball dabs off his hips or a steer through the third man, Kedar was everything that Dhoni needed in those middle overs.
On the way to his fifth half-century, Kedar hit nine fours and a six as he upped the ante once Dhoni started suffering from cramps, getting those big shots out of the closet.
That age is catching up was visible when Dhoni was taking those doubles on big Australian grounds but he did enough to complete his 71st half-century in his 339th ODI. Fittingly, Dhoni finished the game with successive boundaries off Marcus Stoinis.
In the afternoon, Indian bowlers controlled the proceedings like seasoned puppeteers, pulling strings at will to restrict Australia to a sub-par 236 for 7.
It was a vastly different performance from the bowling unit which maintained discipline for the better part of the 50 overs with Mohammed Shami (2/44 in 10 overs) showing the way.
Kuldeep Yadav (2/46 in 10 overs), Ravindra Jadeja (0/33 in 10 overs) and Kedar Jadhav (1/31) made up for a rare off-day that Jasprit Bumrah (2/60 in 10 overs), had by his standards.
Even Usman Khawaja (50) and Glenn Maxwell (40), despite being the top two contributors, weren't exactly comfortable against an Indian attack that bowled as many as 169 dot balls.
This effectively meant Australia couldn't score 28.1 overs out of the 50 overs during Indian innings.
What the statistics won't reveal is the contribution of Kedar as the sixth bowler and Jadeja, who stifled the Aussies during the second Powerplay.
This was after Shami bowled a brilliant wicketless first spell which was seen off by Stoinis (37, 53 balls) and Khawaja (50, 76 balls), who added 87 runs for the second wicket after early dismissal of Aaron Finch.
It was Khawaja, who was first to break the shackles with a cover drive off Bumrah and a six off Kuldeep, introduced in the last over of the first Powerplay.
With only 38 runs coming in the first Powerplay, the duo especially Stoinis decided to up the ante against Indian bowling's weakest link Vijay Shankar (0/22 in 3 overs), hitting him for a flurry of boundaries.
In the next five overs, Australia scored 33 and looked like regaining ground when Jadhav (1/31 from 7 overs) got a lucky breakthrough with a rank half-tracker. Stoinis mistimed the pull shot to Virat Kohli at mid-wicket.
Khawaja completed his sixth half-century in ODIs but couldn't get the elevation while giving Kuldeep the charge. Shankar took a well-judged catch at deep mid-wicket boundary running sideways.
Maxwell joined Peter Handscomb at 97 for three and the duo farmed the strike well during their run-a-ball partnership.
Handscomb was using his feet well but Kuldeep managed to produce a classical chinaman's delivery. Handscomb was deceived twice first in the air and then it broke back sharply for Dhoni to complete the easiest of glovework.
Once Handscomb was out, India controlled the second Powerplay with Kedar and Jadeja choking the run-flow.
Despite not getting wickets, Jadeja bowled two miserly spells 5-0-15-0 and 5-0-18-0. To top it, he was hit for only two boundaries and bowled 34 dot balls which kept the visitors under tight leash.
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Karnataka Cong pays tributes to Manmohan Singh at the venue planned for convention
Belagavi (Karnataka) (PTI): Karnataka Congress on Friday paid tributes to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who died on Thursday, at the site where they planned mega convention here for the centenary celebrations of the 1924 Indian National Congress session presided by Mahatma Gandhi.
Several Congress leaders including its President Mallikarjun Kharge and Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, attended the extended Congress Working Committee meeting planned as part of the centenary celebrations, here on Thursday.
They were scheduled to address a mega convention named 'Jai Bapu- Jai Bhim - Jai Samvidhan' here today, but the event was cancelled following Singh's demise. Kharge, Gandhi and several AICC leaders have rushed back to Delhi.
Other leaders including Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, Deputy Chief Minister and state Congress chief D K Shivakumar, state ministers and legislators paid floral tributes to Singh's portrait at the venue planned for mega convention.
Siddaramaiah in his address said, Manmohan Singh was a great economist and a very humble human being.
"He was soft natured, soft and less spoken. I had the opportunity to meet him several times as the Leader of Opposition and Chief Minister of Karnataka. He treated and spoke to everyone respectfully and heard everyone patiently and used to say directly whether something told or requested of him will either happen or not," he said.
Singh was an honest Prime Minister, the CM said, he had occupied various positions in his career and did justice to them, and tried to find solutions to various problems faced by the country.
Recalling his tenure as finance minister in Narasimha Rao government and as prime minister for ten years, Siddaramaiah said, he opened up the economy, lifted the country financially, and the nation cannot forget his contribution.
It was Singh who brought in the food security act, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), Right to Education, Right to Information, Siddaramaiah said, "He tried to lift the people of the country socially and economically. He was a cultured, gentlemanly politician. His death is a loss to the entire world..."
Shivakumar lauded Manmohan Singh's economic policies and contribution for the country's progress. He asked the Karnataka Higher Education Minister to explore the possibility of setting up a big research centre on Singh's economic policy at the Bengaluru University.
"We will make necessary decisions on this at the government level and in the cabinet," he said, noting that Singh's policies touched upon all sections of the society. "He might have passed away, but his programmes are still alive. We shall all walk in the path that he has laid down."
Shivakumar said, K C Venugopal asked him to try and connect Manmohan Singh to the extended Congress Working Committee meeting virtually but former prime minister's office informed him that he was unwell and about to be moved to AIIMS in New Delhi.
"When the AICC president was hosting a dinner on Thursday night, Rahul Gandhi received a phone call informing that Singh's condition had deteriorated. We immediately halted the dinner at 9.50 pm and I was officially asked to halt all the events including the mega convention scheduled for Friday," he said.
Manmohan Singh, the architect of India's economic reforms, died in New Delhi on Thursday night. He was 92.
Singh's death was announced by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi, where he was admitted in the Emergency ward around 8.30 PM in a critical condition.
