Rohit’s brilliance helps India set mammoth target for Aussies

It was the Rohit Sharma show after that.

India will look to get their combination right as they renew their fierce rivalry against a confident Australia in the first of the five-match ODI series starting in Perth on Tuesday, marking the onset of a long limited-overs schedule stretching until the World T20. In reply Australian openers Aaron Finch and David Warner scored only 8 and 5 respectively.

Umpires: Simon Fry, Australia, and Richard Kettleborough, England. His last four ODI hundreds have all been above 150. His plan was simple, to hit the ball with the strong breeze that blows here.

After the end of first inning team India was pretty sure about their win the only work is to done by the bowlers. He scored 113 runs through the leg side.

In the seven previous bilateral ODI series between the two countries – all of which have been played in India – Australia holds a narrow advantage, with four wins to India’s three, although the latter has won the last two in 2010 and 2013.

Sran, who finished with figures of 3-56, took his second scalp soon after as Warner was caught by Kohli for just five. However that does not seem to be the focus this time round as both the teams are hoping to get in shape and find form ahead of the World Twenty20. “It puts a little bit of pressure on India going into game two to know that if they’re batting well they’ve got to get a really big score”.

“I think it’s important that after you score 300 runs you bowl well and I think in the middle overs when the spinners were bowling they gave up too many runs”, Dhoni said. He is no stranger to scoring those “daddy hundreds” anymore and he said that is what he endeavours to do everytime he goes out to bat. “The way he started batting, it felt that he will play good and he displayed good cricket”, Rohit’s father Gurunath Sharma said.

Rohit’s innings in numbers – 4 150-plus innings recorded by Rohit Sharma.

Rohit on the other hand remained unbeaten at 171 off 163 balls.

“What makes life easy for an worldwide team is the kind of domestic cricket (they have)… if you see the Australian first-class cricket, it is very good, which means the players who come up from the ranks of domestic cricket or first-class cricket have already got good exposure of playing cricketers who have played global cricket or are playing worldwide cricket at that point of time”.

India will feel Shami’s absence most, the 25-year-old returning from a lengthy injury layoff only to land in Australia and be ruled out for the series with a hamstring injury.