India has become first nation to clean sweep Australian cricket team in Australia in past 140 years. Men in Blue defeated Australia in the third T20 of series by 7 wickets to win three T20I series by 3-0. In a close contest, Suresh Raina hit winning run for India on the last ball of match played at Sydney Cricket Ground.
Winning this series, Indian team has reached to the first position in ICC T20 rankings with the gain of 20 points. Before start of the series, India was at eighth place with 110 points and now team has 120 points. On the other hand Australia have fallen to rankings and now stood at no 8.
In this crucial final match, Australia won toss and chose to bat. Shane Watson was leading the side for the time and he smashed brilliant century to lead team towards big score. Watson made 124 runs in 71 balls to put 198 runs on the board in 20 overs.
It was a tough target but some brilliant performances from top order helped India to win the match and seal series by 3-0. Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli scored half-centuries that built path for middle order batsmen where team could move towards win.
After losing the match, Shane Watson praised India for this 199 runs target.
He said, “We gave ourselves a good chance, but more than anything it’s a great learning curve. We’ve got a young and inexperienced side and playing a world class team like India you going to learn a lot out of it and we’ve got to take those lessons on board. To chase 190 is incredible but they have world class players. We’ve been giving guys lots of opportunities because we have a lot coming up.”
MS Dhoni said, “We needed extra 5% 10% from the bowlers, I think that’s what has changed (after early ODI losses). Credit to the bowlers for doing a fantastic job in this series.”
Centurion of the match Shane Watson was awarded man of the match for his brilliant 124 runs whereas India’s Virat Kohli named Player of the Series.
Virat: Credit goes to Yuvi and Raina for finishing the game #AUSvIND
— BCCI (@BCCI) January 31, 2016