Rohit Sharma's unbeaten 171 off 163 balls powers India to finish on 309-3 in the first of the five match India-Australia ODI series that began in Perth on Tuesday.
Sharma has yet again played the entire quota of 50 overs, scoring his third century in the last 4 innings against the mighty Aussies.
Dhoni and Jadeja played good cameos and helped Sharma towards the end of the innings. All in all, a good batting performance by the visitors after winning the toss. None of the Aussie bowlers looked threatening apart from Hazlewood.
The tall fast bowler bowled extremely well, took a wicket and bowled with an economy of 4.1. It is going to be a stiff run chase but the Aussie batting line-up has all the fire power to achieve this total.
India started off on a decent note but lost Dhawan fairly cheaply. It was then that the dynamic duo of Kohli and Sharma added 207 runs to give a perfect platform. They batted well and took calculated risks to keep the run-rate up. Kohli fell just 9 short of yet another hundred but it was all for the team as he looked to score some quick runs but found the fielder in the deep.
As for the team composition, Barinder Sran made his debut for India. Young batter Manish Pandey also finds a place in the playing 11. Meanwhile, Joel Paris and Scott Boland will make their debuts for the Kangaroos.
Sran may be an unknown entity in international cricket but Barinder Sran is not quite unfamiliar to Australian captain Steve Smith, who says the rookie pacer has impressive variations in his armoury and was discussed in the dressing room.
"I haven't seen much of Sran's one-day cricket back home in India, but I saw him bowling in the IPL with Rajasthan Royals and he was quite impressive. He's a tall lad, swings the ball early and he's got a few change-ups I've let the boys know about them," PTI quoted Smith as saying.
