Virender Sehwag had predicted on the morning of day five that he expected his team to wrap up the Australian innings in the session between lunch and tea. Even in his wildest of dreams he wouldn’t have imagined the way in which the Australians, left facing an improbable 90 overs to save the game, or left to chase an improbable 375 runs to win the Test, caved in, to hand India a massive 320 run win – their biggest in Test history.
Australia began through their overnight batsmen Michael Clarke and Brad Haddin, who had batted out 29.3 overs on day four. However, the pair were separated four minutes into the final day, when Zaheer Khan set up Haddin nicely by bowling two outswingers, and then got one to jog back in, which sneaked through in the gap between bat and pad and crash into middle stump.
The 84-run stand was broken, just as India would have liked, in the very first over of the morning.
Cameron White, the batting allrounder in the Australian line up, walked out to bat, and he chose to play an expansive cover drive to the second ball he faced, only that it was a little too early in his innings, and that Zaheer Khan, with his tail up, had bowled one full, wide and got it to move away, enough to take the outside edge and carry to MS Dhoni, who dived to his right and came up with the ball.
Brett Lee received yet another beauty first up; Zaheer landed one on the middle stump and got it to move away. Lee played down the wrong line, and the late movement hit the off stump to complete a miserable match for Lee.
Michael Clarke meanwhile brought up his first fifty on tour; Clarke, who had a best of 36* previously on this tour, justified being tagged Australia’s best player of spin. He was absolutely in control when playing both Harbhajan Singh and Amit Mishra, and knocked the ball around and picked up runs with ease.
After the early carnage, where he saw his team lose three wickets for two runs, Clarke found an able ally in Mitchell Johnson, and together, they went about delaying the inevitable.
Comments to date