Making a decent comeback towards the end, the Indian bowling attack managed to restrict Australia to 313 despite a 193-run opening stand between skipper Aaron Finch and Usman Khawaja in the third ODI in Ranchi on Friday.
While Finch fell 7 runs short to get a century, his opening partner Khawaja scored the maiden ton of his ODI career. Glenn Maxwell (47 off 31 balls) also contributed with lusty blows. However, Australia could score only 69 runs in the last 10 overs, despite being 244 for 2 after 40 overs, courtesy Bumrah and Shami who bowled 64 dot balls between them.
The Indian spinners -- Ravindra Jadeja (0/64 in 10 overs) and Kedar Jadhav (0/32 in 2 overs) -- were carted all around the park. Kuldeep Yadav (3/64 in 10 overs), however, redeemed himself at the back-end of the innings.
The trio gave away 160 runs in 22 overs and it was left to Jasprit Bumrah (0/53) and Mohammed Shami (1/52 in 10 overs) to maintain the discipline during the final overs as the total could have gone close to the 350-run mark.
The fielding on the day was also way below par as Shikhar Dhawan, at square leg dropped Khawaja, who tried a reverse sweep, while batting on 17 off Jadeja's bowling. Virat Kohli, Kedar Jadhav, Jasprit Bumrah were all guilty of slip-ups on the field which also released the pressure on the visitors.
Mohammed Shami's freak on-field injury also played its part as he had to leave the field temporarily after bowling the first three overs. The momentum shifted from there on as both Finch and Khawaja played the spin troika brilliantly.
Vijay Shankar (0/44 in 8 overs) had to share a bulk of the load between the fifth and sixth bowler after Kedar was mercilessly hammered by Finch, who hit all his three sixes in the arc -- between long-on and deep mid-wicket.