History beckons Team India in the third ODI at Melbourne

India beat Australia by 6 wickets in the second ODI at Adelaide on Tuesday. Chasing 299 for a win, India reached that target in the last over with four balls to spare. For India, King Kohli scored his 39th ODI hundred, his 23rd while chasing, 20 of those hundreds resulting in India’s win.

All the Indian batsmen contributed to this big win with Shikhar Dhawan (32) Rohit Sharma (42), Ambati Rayudu(24), M.S. Dhoni (55 not out) and Dinesh Karthik (25 not out) coming good in tandem.

With this win, the series is leveled at one all with the decider to be played at Melbourne on Friday, the 18th January. With the win at Adelaide, the ODI series is very much alive. Besides, India is on the cusp of making history at Melbourne.

Kohli scored his 39th ODI hundred while Dhoni got back his finishing touch at Adelaide

In this Australian tour, India, after conceding a lead, leveled the three-match T20I one all with the second match of the series abandoned. Then India created history by winning a Test series in Australia for the first time in 71 years and 12 tours by a margin of 2-1. Now If India manages to win the last ODI at Melbourne, Kohli’s team would be the first Indian team to leave the Australian shores unscathed series-wise in all 3 formats of the game.

On every 11 previous tours to Australia, India had never won a Test series and hence this opportunity never arose. The next best possible scenario for India was the Australian tours in which India managed to hold on to a draw in Test matches. There were 3 such drawn Test series before and on all those 3 occasions India lost the one-day tri-series that followed the Test series. India started playing ODI matches in Australia only from the 1980-81 series.

The drawn Test series

The 1980-81 series

For many of the old-timers, the draw that India managed to achieve under Sunil Gavaskar in 1980-81 was the best-drawn Test series India had ever achieved in Australia for two reasons. First Australia had one of the best players of that generation.

The second important reason was that it was the first and only time India had come back from a deficit of 0-1 to win the last Test at Melbourne to level the series which was a remarkable achievement.

Out of the other two drawn Test series, one was a winless draw in 1985-86 and in 2003-2004, it was Australia who came back from behind to level the series. Hence, the draw achieved in the 1980-81 series was so special.

Sadly in the Benson and Hedges one-day tri-series in 1980-81, India managed to win only 3 out of the 10 matches and failed to qualify for the finals.

The 1985-86 series

In this three-match Test series, all the three matches ended in a draw due to weather interference. India had the upper hand in all the three matches and should have won a minimum of one match, if not two, in that series.

Though India reached the finals of the Benson and Hedges one-day tri-series in 1985-86, they lost to Australia and Kapil Dev’s men had nothing to show on their return from that tour.

The 2003-2004 series

The Ganguly led Indian team showed a lot of spirit in leveling the Test series 1-1. But they once again failed to win the finals of the VB one-day tri-series losing to Australia.

Thus on all the three occasions, India managed to draw a Test- series in Australia, they ended up losing the one-day series that followed and returned home empty-handed.

The lost Test series

After the advent of one-day matches, India suffered Test series defeats in Australia on 5 occasions in 1991-1992(0-4),1999-2000(0-3), 2007-2008(1-2),2011-12(0-4) and 2014-15(0-2). Out of the 5 occasions, on 4 occasions they lost both the Test and ODI series heavily.

However, in 2007-2008, the India team led by M.S. Dhoni won the Commonwealth Bank one-day Trophy defeating Australia in the finals. In fact, that was the only time India has ever won a one-day tri-series trophy in Australia.

Apart from the above, India had won a trophy twice in Australia on a tour when no Test match was played. The first one was an international one-day tournament, the Benson and Hedges World Series Cup in 1985 which India won comfortably. The second one was the T20I series win in 2016 when India humbled Australia 3-0.

But on both occasions, it was not a full-fledged tour involving Test matches.

Now this Indian team led by Virat Kohli is in with an amazing prospect to win both the Test and the one-day series in Australia for the first time if they manage to win the last ODI at Melbourne on Friday. The momentum is right now with Team India. History beckons for Kohli and his men.