India A wins Tri- Series

India A defeated Australia A by 50 runs to win the tri-nation A team series at Pretoria.

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.

Both of them got on well, stiching together a good partnership and India A was looking good to post a score well above 300.

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.

Shami Ahmed was the pick of the bowlers, who provided crucial initial breakthroughs. The spinners also complimented him well by picking up wickets in regular intervals.

The Indian team would be quite satisfied with the performance, especially considering that some of their first-team choice played well in South African conditions. This is a good start for the preparations for the dec-jan South African tour.