India 281/7 (50.0 overs)
Australia 137/9 (21.0 overs)
Hardik Pandya and MS Dhoni put Australia to the sword in India as the hosts sealed a 26-run victory in the first one-day international in Chennai.
Pandya hit a career-best 83 from No7 in a century stand with Dhoni, who scored 79 as India reached 281 for seven.
A lengthy rain delay saw Australia’s target revised to 164 in 21 overs, but the tourists struggled to an underpowered 137 for nine.
India opted to bat first and soon found themselves in peril, Nathan Coulter-Nile excelling with the new ball to leave the home team 11 for three.
Ajinkya Rahane and Manish Pandey were welcome wickets, but captain Virat Kohli – for a duck, no less – was the real prize.
Marcus Stoinis kept the ball rolling, removing Rohit Sharma (28) and Kedhar Jadhav (40) before the halfway mark, but that brought Dhoni and Pandya together. Pandya took the lead in their 118-run stand, slamming Adam Zampa for three consecutive sixes before the spinner eventually took his costly revenge. Dhoni then sped up the run-rate in the death overs, with support from Bhuveneshwar Kumar (32 no).
Rain had threatened to force an abandonment but after finally retaking the field, with a new T20-style target of 164, Australia buckled.
Five of their top seven were dismissed in single figures with David Warnermustering 25 and Glenn Maxwell counter-punching with 39 from just 18 balls.
Pandya added two scalps to his earlier runs, captain Steve Smith and Travis Head, while Yuzvendra Chahal recorded three for 30 with his leg-breaks, including the wicket of Maxwell which all but ended Australia’s hopes.
All-rounder James Faulkner struck a few late blows to make the margin of defeat more respectable, but even his unbeaten 32 could not set up a close finish. The series continues on Thursday with the second game in Kolkata.
2nd ODI
IND 252
AUS 202
IND win by 50 runs
Australia have gone 2-0 down in their one-day international series against India after collapsing in Kolkata.
Set 253 for victory, the visitors lost their last eight wickets for 117 runs with a hat-trick to left-arm wrist spinner Kuldeep Yadav sealing Thursday’s match at Eden Gardens.
After falling 50 runs short in the second of five ODIs, Australia now need to win Sunday’s match in Indore to keep the series alive.
The captain Steve Smith looked like he could guide Australia home in his 100th ODI, but after a measured half-century he was caught on 59.
Smith pulled a Hardik Pandya short ball to deep square leg where substitute fielder Ravindra Jadeja came off the boundary to take an impressive catch.
Two overs after Smith’s dismissal, Yadav weaved his magic to dismiss Matthew Wade, Ashton Agar and Pat Cummins with consecutive deliveries.
Wade chopped a wide, sharp-turning ball back on to his stumps before Agar was out lbw. Cummins walked out to the middle and was greeted with a superb wrong’un which found the edge and lodged in MS Dhoni’s gloves.
Marcus Stoinis top scored with a gallant innings, but ran out of partners and was left unbeaten on 62. Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal (2-34) again exposed Australia’s deficiency against wrist spin, combining for five wickets as they did in game one in Chennai. Bhuvneshwar Kumar was superb with 3-9 off 6.1 overs.
Maxwell came to the crease with the score at 3-85 and swatted back-to-back sixes off Kuldeep to get off the mark. But soon after he was bamboozled by Chahal and Dhoni pounced on the chance to stump him on 14.
Openers David Warner and Hilton Cartwright both fell to Kumar for one, while Travis Head made a run-a-ball 39.
Earlier, Nathan Coulter-Nile was again Australia’s most damaging bowler, picking up 3-51 off his 10 overs in oppressive conditions.
The West Australian paceman again claimed the prized scalp of Virat Kohli, but the Indian captain had already done the damage with a beautifully compiled 92 off 107 balls.
A huge score loomed when he had combined for a 102-run partnership with Ajinkya Rahane (55 off 64), but the opener was run out by Hilton Cartwright and India went on to lose their last seven wickets for 66.
Australia felt the full force of the stifling Kolkata heat while bowling with Wade, Ashton Agar and Kane Richardson all receiving treatment for heat stress or cramps.
3rd ODI
Australia 293-6; India 294-5
India win by five wickets to go 3-0 up with two games to play
India withstood an early assault by Australia to wrap up the series with a five-wicket victory in the third one-day international in Indore.
Australia had looked on course for a huge total after winning the toss and batting first, but they stumbled to 293 for six after Aaron Finch was dismissed for 124 off 125 balls.
Ajinkya Rahane (70) and Rohit Sharma (71) gave India the perfect start to their chase with an opening stand of 139 inside 22 overs. Australia removed both batsmen in quick succession to give themselves a glimmer of hope but Hardik Pandya (78) led India to within 10 runs of victory and Manish Pandey (36 not out) completed a comfortable win with 13 balls to spare.
The teams will travel to Bengaluru for Thursday’s fourth ODI with Australia bidding to avoid a series whitewash.
4th ODI
Australia 334-5; India 313-8: Australia win by 21 runs
David Warner and Aaron Finch star as tourists narrow series deficit
A David Warner century inspired Australia to a victory in the fourth one-day international against India, restoring some pride for the tourists with the series already lost.
Warner’s 124 in his 100th match helped his side set India 335 to win, a target that the hosts fell 22 runs short of after some classy bowling at the death from Australia.
While India won the five-match series after winning the first three encounters, Australia ended an 11-game losing streak away from home in Thursday’s fourth ODI in Bangalore.
India were on target until an outstanding piece of fielding from the captain, Steve Smith, gave Australia a crucial breakthrough at 1-135. His save at backward point sparked confusion between Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, who ended up at the same end as his partner before being run out at the other end.
It was a major blow for India after Sharma whacked five sixes in his innings of 65 off 55 balls.
Kohli, who was dropped by Travis Head on six, looked set to make Australia pay until he edged an attempted late cut off Nathan Coulter-Nile onto his stumps on 21.
Hardik Pandya and Kedar Jadhav put on 78 for the fourth wicket until Adam Zampa got some revenge on his chief tormentor. The leg-spinner went for 41 off his first five overs, but bounced back with the vital wicket of Pandya (41) who was caught on the boundary by David Warner.
The Australian pacemen Coulter-Nile, Kane Richardson and Pat Cummins were exceptional in the final overs with Jadhav (67) and Manish Pandey (33) departing and MS Dhoni (15) unable to rescue the chase.
Richardson took the wickets of Ajinkya Rahane for 53, as well as Jadhav and Dhoni, and finished with 3-58.
Earlier, a 231-run opening stand from Warner and Aaron Finch laid a superb foundation after Steve Smith won the toss and chose to bat.
A mini-collapse stunted the momentum of the innings as Warner, Finch (94) and Smith (three) departed in the space of 14 balls with Australia losing 3for 5.
Head never got going in his knock of 29 off 38 balls after being elevated ahead of Smith to bat at No. 3. Peter Handscomb made a handy 43, while Marcus Stoinis chipped in with 15 from nine balls to round out Australia’s innings.
5th ODI
The opening batsman Rohit Sharma smashed 125 to guide India to a convincing seven-wicket win against Australia in the fifth and final one-day international in Nagpur on Sunday, for a 4-1 series victory.
Chasing 243, the hosts cantered to their target with more than seven overs remaining as Australia’s listless bowling attack failed to pose any serious challenge.
India 49 for 1 (Kohli 22*) beat Australia 118 for 8 (Finch 42, Kuldeep 2-16, Bumrah 2-17) by nine wickets via DLS method
Australia's batsmen had a dire time coping with a slow and low surface at the JSCA International Stadium and never recovered from the early muddle, eventually conceding the first T20I by nine wickets to India. Rain came down after Australia had limped to 118 for 8 in 18.4 overs, and by the time it subsided, India's chase had been shortened to six overs. They mowed down the 48-run target with minimal fuss despite the loss of Rohit Sharma.
It was a pitch that had everything a batsman does not desire to see in a T20 game - variable bounce, lack of pace, grip, turn, and early on some movement in the air.
Some of that swing reappeared at the start of India's chase; off the very first ball, Rohit wristily whipped an inswinger from the debutant paceman Jason Behrendorff late through midwicket. He followed it up with a nonchalantly flicked six over long leg off Nathan Coulter-Nile, but the bowler swung one past a flick next ball and clattered his stumps. Virat Kohli and Shikhar Dhawan then ran down the remainder of the target with the help of timely boundaries. Adam Zampa bounced back excellently from a first-ball four in the penultimate over to concede just six and leave India with as many to get off the last over, and Kohli sealed it with a lofted four over extra-cover off Daniel Christian.
Just how low the surface played was seen in the fact that six of the eight wickets Australia lost were bowled; two of them chopping on. It was far from what David Warner, Australia's stand-in captain, had pictured when he was asked to bat and expressed his inclination to do the same. The miscalculations of length began early enough, Warner setting the template when, having flayed two wide deliveries for four, he again swooped his bat down at an angle to a good-length ball and chopped on in the first over. Not long after emerged the signs that Australia were in for a long, hard grind as they played out 13 dots in the first five overs.
The effects of those dots were somewhat neutralised by Aaron Finch's counter-charge. The only Australia batsman to display any kind of fluency, Finch built up steam with smart clips, gentle dabs, the occasional chip, and when the bowlers erred in length, brutal cuts and forceful drives.
Hardik Pandya was especially culpable of those errors in length. He hardly found pace off the surface, and his first spell was strewn with fuller deliveries and length balls that often came with the added incentive of width. In all, his first two overs contained just three dot balls and four fours.
The dismissal of Glenn Maxwell, who added 47 with Finch, halted Australia's all-too-brief charge. It arrived off a short ball that Maxwell pulled straight into the hands of short midwicket.
The shorter length would go on to characterise Chahal's spell and was testament to how well he had sussed out the surface. While it didn't help the pacers to drop short, this length worked in favour of the legspinner, as it gave the ball enough time to grip and prevented the batsmen from getting on top of the bounce.
Kuldeep Yadav, the left-arm wristspinner, made for a study in contrast with his lengths in the first half of his spell. Seven of his first 12 balls were full and it meant that Finch settled into the sweep, employing the shot to the first five balls he faced off him. That turned out to be the set-up that would trap Finch as he loaded up for another sweep only for Kuldeep to fire it in quick and fuller still, leaving Finch with next to no time to adjust and bowling him.
Variable bounce accounted for Moises Henriques and Travis Head. In contrast to Finch, Kuldeep slowed his pace down to Henriques, who telegraphed a charge and swung blindly to be bowled. The rest of the order hardly painted a pretty picture. Australia's slide allowed Pandya to bounce back with a much-improved second spell of 2-0-10-1.
Perhaps the only passage of play that India wouldn't look back on too fondly was the 15th over, sent down by Chahal, which saw two shelled catches and a rare stumping chance fluffed by MS Dhoni. That Tim Paine, the batsman reprieved on each occasion, still ended up with an unflattering 17 off 16 summed up Australia's day.
2nd T20I
Like governments, Jason Behrendorff lured India with freebies up front before taxing them with four top-order wickets, a spell of play India never recovered from. Adam Zampa, who has not had the best of times on this trip, had his own back with two big middle-overs wickets to make sure Australia finally snapped their seven-match losing streak in T20Is against India. On a tacky pitch, with spin, seam and early swing on offer, India's batting seemed to fail to reassess what a good total was and fell 22 short of the 140-mark that might well have made for a tight chase.
The way the match started, though, you might have thought of a score much higher than 140. The first ball was a gentle full toss that Rohit Sharma caressed to the point boundary; the third was a long half-volley that was crashed straight of mid-off. Then came the swing against the angle from left-arm over. Like Mohammad Amir has done previously, Behrendorff trapped Rohit in front with the fourth ball. The late swing two balls later was slightly less perfect, but the inside edge lobbed off Virat Kohli's pad for a return catch. Behrendorff had knocked over two of the most destructive limited-overs batsmen in the world in his first over.
David Warner chose to bowl out Behrendorff, who has the best average and third-best strike rate in all T20 Powerplays since 2014. Behrendorff responded with the wickets of Manish Pandey and Shikhar Dhawan inside the Powerplay. With the threat of swing, Pandey fell poking at one, while Dhawan was victim of a sensational catch by Warner running back from mid-off. At 27 for 4, India were forced into rebuild mode, which has of late been the perfect situation for MS Dhoni.
Kedar Jadhav kept playing the odd shot while Dhoni seemed to settle into a typical innings in such situations. But against the legspin of Zampa, Dhoni began to play uncharacteristically. Usually, Dhoni prefers to make sure he bats through the overs when India are in strife, but here, he started to look for the big hits as early as the 10th over. A full toss was put away, a wide earned as Dhoni mocked a charge down the pitch, but in the same over he was stumped as the ball kicked away after falling short of his reach. A couple of overs later, Jadhav failed to pick a wrong'un when looking for a boundary over extra cover, making for an ungainly sight as he was bowled.
These wickets came at an unfortunate time for India because the dew made an appearance soon, but India didn't have the muscle to make use of it as there was hardly any acceleration in an innings with little deviation off the six-runs-an-over mark. The value of those extra 20 runs became apparent as soon as Australia began the chase. The ball continued to misbehave for the quicks: both Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah found seam movement and inconsistent bounce, which resulted in the early wickets of big guns Warner and Aaron Finch.
The asking rate, though, didn't climb, and Australia could afford to play a couple of calm overs. Australia chose a calm head to do so, promoting Moises Henriques to No. 3, a role Warner used him in at Sunrisers Hyderabad in the IPL too. Henriques and Travis Head took their time before opening up against the spinners, who struggled with the slippery ball. Kuldeep Yadav, in particular, dished up a few long hops, which provided Australia with enough momentum in a small chase.
Once the shots started coming off, the rest of the match was played in near silence as the capacity crowd on Barsapara Stadium's international debut agonised over India's defeat. A measure of the crowd's enthusiasm was seen in how even Dhoni failed to appeal for a faint nick lost to all barring Kohli in the loud stadium. The ground, though, had its task cut out with a lot of rain leading into the game, which might have resulted in the damp pitch.
3rd T20I - match abandoned without a ball being bowled
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