Great india run

M S Dhoni’s 100th ODI win as skipper, Team India’s seventh in a row with 70 wickets in the pocket in the edition, and business class tickets for the Sydney semifinal — as makeovers go, this one is what the nation wasn’t really expecting but waiting for with bated breath. To carry a team so comprehensive into the penultimate game of the biggest trophy in cricket, for the second consecutive time, is something as special as that diving beauty of a catch the skipper took behind the wickets to dismiss Tamim Iqbal at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Thursday. He smiled from cheek to cheek and indulgently called it a ‘fluke’. But India’s victory in the quarterfinals at MCG (and all through this tournament so far) was no fluke. It was a hard fought, well planned and ably executed conclusion of a sustained “process” that Dhoni has all along been talking about.

India beating Bangladesh with a handsome 109 runs to enter the semifinals came on the two remaining loose-ends being tied up - Rohit Sharma and Ravindra Jadeja. Sharma returned to his imperious form, canning a century and 37 runs in an innings marked by caution, class and prudent build-up - at the right time and after seeing those crucial opening overs through when the Bangladeshi bowlers had put on the squeeze, Sharma opened up his hungry bat, making the most of the last 20 overs.

It was a century sans dramatics scored with an eye on the overall good of the team and it went a long way in stitching up partnerships down the order. He started off with Dhawan (30), did not get unsettled by Kohli’s early exit (3), stood up to Ajinkya Rahane (19), accelerated with Suresh Raina (65) and took the mantle of the total aggressor with Dhoni (6).

Sharma took 223 minutes to make his 137 runs in 126 balls hitting 14 boundaries and three sixes at a strike rate of 108.73 coming under a cloud just once when he was caught at 90 to a ball that was controversially ruled a no-ball (above waist full toss) by square leg umpire Alam Dheer. Other than that, it was an impeccable innings that became delectably audacious in the last 15 overs and saw India through to 273. By the time Sharma left in the 47th over, much of the job had been done and the rest was finished by Ravindra Jadeja who came in on a jet, hit a quickfire 23 in just 10 balls and saw India to 302, a total that has never been defended at the MCG.

A special mention for Suresh Raina who gave Sharma the anchor and company he needed to bloom. Bright sunlight peeped through the gathering dark clouds over the MCG when Raina walked into the middle in the 29th over. India, who had started off carefully, were struggling to up the run rate which had fallen from 5.5 in the initial overs to just four. Raina’s sound 65 in 57 balls all decked up with 7 fours and a six, was just what the doctor ordered to end the building constipation of runs.

Dhoni later said that he would have been happier getting more runs and a better opposition could have got to the score, but hindsight was not quite the hand-maiden of a night that had turned out to be the biggest for his team in Australia after a four-and-a-half-month struggle that got every bad footage and critical story to his name.

After being given a defendable total by their batters, the Indian bowlers did not disappoint and took no time in crushing any uprising the Bangladeshi hitters may have attempted initially, even though a cheeky Tamim Iqbal hit Mohammed Shami for three boundaries in an over before being sent back by that Dhoni dive which had Twitter on a roll.

Umesh Yadav took four and consistently threw the ball at 145 km/hr even as Ravichandran Ashwin who remained wicketless in this one, was the real miser for India conceding at an economy rate of only 3-an-over and building up enough pressure for his partner at the other end to strike. Even Raina, brought in ahead of Jadeja bowled a maiden in his three-over spell. Mahmudullah Riyad, who was in the match on the back of two consecutive centuries, was ensnared cheaply by Shami when he was at 21. The highest individual score the Bangladeshis could post was by spinner Nassir Hossain who quietly scored 35 before being sent off by Jadeja.

On their part, the Bangla Tigers bowled with intensity with Rubel Hossain and Taskin Ahmed managing to restrict the Indians till the 35th over before losing intensity and way, giving away 176 runs in the last 20 overs. Their skipper Mashrafe Mortaza who failed to rekindle the 4-38 magic of 2007, said that it was a good learning curve for Bangladesh to have reached where it did in a premium tournament. As Dhoni pointed out later in the evening, no India batsman may be among the top scorers of the tournament but India is in the semifinals. The good thing, he said, was that this meant everyone is pitching in which is good for the future of the team. Clockwork teamwork is good work, wouldn’t you sayIJ