The fifth ODI of the CB series ended in a dramatic tie that saw both India and Sri Lanka post an identical scoreline of 237/9 in their respective 50 overs. For India, Gautam Gambhir top scored with 91 runs and Dhoni was unbeaten on 58.
Indian captain MS Dhoni embarked upon yet another mission to drive his side to a sensational finish and he almost succeeded in repeating his exploits against Australia earlier in the series.
The rotation policy of Indian cricket team seems to have started backfiring as was evident from the dismissal of Sachin Tendulkar early in their innings. Compared to the innings Tendulkar played at Perth where he looked in his elements, here at Adelaide he looked out of sorts and eventually got out edging Nuwan Kulasekera behind stumps for the score of 15.
Virat Kohli (15) suffered a rare failure with the bat while Rohit Sharma’s frustrating wait for a substantial knock continued as he was run out after scoring just 15. Suresh Raina also perished soon after continuing his rough patch as he was snapped up by Kumar Sangakkara behind the stumps putting a full stop to his innings at eight.
Meanwhile, the man in-form Gautam Gambhir played another brilliant knock to provide a solid ground for the skipper for a late flurry. En route his knock he hit six boundaries but once again was unfortunate to miss a century as a wrong call from Dhoni cost him his wicket that paved the way for Sri Lanka’s comeback late into the match.
Barring Gambhir and Dhoni, every other Indian batsman failed to play a knock of any significance.
The failure however was overshadowed by what transpired in the final over of the match when India needed nine runs to claim their third victory in a row with Malinga all set to throw down the final six balls.
The departure of Gautam Gambhir threatened to derail the Indian innings and with the inconsistent Jadeja (3) going for big shots at a time when rotating the strike seemed more sensible, it was left to Dhoni to steer the chase.
After struggling for 10 deliveries, Jadeja succumbed to a soft dismissal off Perera. With 53 runs still needed, India’s most economical bowler of the day R Ashwin joined his skipper in the middle and played a useful innings of 14 runs before getting out to Malinga’s slower one.
Playing in his first match of the series, Irfan Pathan hit a trademark six off Angelo Mathews to wipe the deficit to 15 runs. He was dismissed in the next delivery which brought in R Vinay on the crease.
In the mean time, Dhoni completed his fifty, still holding the fort taking the match to the final over, something that he has developed a liking to.
With nine runs needed of the final six balls, Dhoni and Vinay managed five runs between them before the latter was run out leaving the captain with a daunting task of scoring four runs of the last delivery.
Dhoni lashed hard at the final ball towards deep cover, ending with a triple, bringing an end to a dramatic run chase with a tie.
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