My Favorite cricket match **Vol. 5 **

Fifth in my list of my Favorite cricket match is a tri-series played between India, Australia and Zimbabwe. This match is played between India and Australia at Melbourne Cricket Ground, Melbourne, Australia on 9^th Jan, 2004.

Australia has won the toss and they have decided to bat first, so India will bowl first. This is how Aussie 11 looks like: Adam Gilchrist (wk), Ricky Ponting (c), Andrew Symonds, Jason Gillespie,Damien Martyn, Michael Clarke, Matthew Hayden, Michael Bevan, Andy Bichel, Ian Harvey, Brad Williams

And lets now look at Indian 11: Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid (wk), VVS Laxman, Sourav Ganguly (c), Yuvraj Singh, Irfan Pathan, Lakshmipathy Balaji, Anil Kumble,Ajit Agarkar, Sanjay Bangar

Australia started very well and aggressively with Mathew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist, Indian bowling is looking very below par. But India managed to get the wicket of Aussie Wicket Keeper batsman Adam Gilchrist, he made run a ball 34 runs with 6 fours at the strike rate of 100. Aussie All rounder Andrew Symonds batted very well and with his knock of 88 runs in 102 balls with 5 fours and 3 sixes at the strike rate of 86 and Michelle Clarke who made 63 runs in 66 balls with 6 fours and 1 six at the strike rate of 95, Australia managed to score 288 runs at the loss of 8 wickets in allotted 50 over’s.

Indian cricket team needs to bat well to chase the target of 289 runs in 50 over’s.

India started very well at lost its first wicket at the score of 103 in the form of Virender Sehwag in the 18^th over the game. With the contributions of Virender sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh, and skipper Saurav ganguly who made the highest 82 runs in 83 balls with 6 fours and 1 six at the strike rate of 99, India managed only 270 runs and were bowled out in 49 over’s and were not able to bat the full allotted 50 over’s and lost the game by 18 runs and Andrew Symonds is the man of the match for his All round performance.