India A tour of South Africa 2013: Bowlers script an easy win in the finals

Dinesh Karthik scored 73 runs to help India set a target of 244

India A defeated Australia A by 50 runs in the finals of the tri-nation series at Pretoria, South Africa.

Batting first, India suffered an early setback with both Rohit Sharma and Cheteshwar Pujara back in the hut for not many runs on the board. Dinesh Karthik joined Shikhar Dhawan at the crease.

Making sure India did not face any further setbacks, they combined to put together a partnership of worth 108 in 110 deliveries to take the score from 34/2 in 5.1 overs to 143/3 in 23.3 overs.

Having reached his fifty, Dhawan was caught behind of Moises Henriques’s bowling for 62 off 65 deliveries. Nathan Coulter-Nile returned to send back Karthik for a well made 73 off 75 balls to leave India in a spot of bother again with the scoreboard reading 158/4 in 28.1 overs.

Australia’s bowlers struck at regular intervals thereafter to restrict India to a score of 243/10 in 49.2 overs. Ambati Rayudu and Wriddhiman Saha were dismissed in 30′s, failing to make use of the starts. Josh Hazlewood and Coulter-Nile picked up 3 wickets each for Australia.

With the series having seen only high scoring matches so far, Australian batsmen were expected to make light work of an easy target set for them.

But as it turned out, the Indian bowlers had different plans as they reduced Australia A to 88/7 in 23.4 overs needing 156 in 158 deliveries with wicket keeper Tim Paine and Hazlewood at the crease.

Not one of the top 6 Australian batsmen managed to get past 20 runs. Paine and Hazlewood stemmed the fall of wickets by stringing together a 54-run partnership. However, it was obvious that they were fighting against insurmountable odds.

By the time Nadeem picked up his third wicket to dismiss Hazlewood for 30 runs, Australia needed 102 runs in 70 balls with just two wickets in hand. Eventually they were bowled out for 193 in the 47th over, 50 runs short of the target. Paine was the highest scorer for Australia with 47 runs off 76 balls.