Australia won the sixth ODI in Guwahati on Sunday by a comfortable six-wicket margin and took an unassailable 4-2 lead in the seven match series. The Australian media lauded Ricky Ponting and his men for the way they have humiliated India despite being without their key players. The series win also meant that Australia consolidated their position at the top of the ODI rankings, which was under threat if India were to win the series.

“Courageous Australia remain cricket’s one-day kings after crushing upstart rivals India in a ruthless show of strength,” screamed a write-up in the Courier Mail. “India’s bold ambition to send Ricky Ponting’s men home without the number one ranking proved hollow with Australia’s six-wicket victory sealing the series and one-day bragging rights.”

Headlined ‘Jubilant Aussies take series over India’, Herald Sun newspaper said the series win by Ponting’s men would be even more devastating to the Indian psyche as it had come with a “virtual Australia-A side”.

“Dhoni’s side will be licking its wounds for a while after being bashed by a virtual Australia ‘A’ side, short of front-line names but big on heart,” it said.

“The loss of Brett Lee, Peter Siddle, Tim Paine, James Hopes and Moises Henriques only served to galvanise Ponting’s unit. Australia has depth in young talent who will not only hold the line as reinforcements but win battles of their own,” the article in the Herald Sun said. “Ponting’s injury-hit squad of ‘home brand’ warriors put India back in their box, dealing a huge psychological blow to their psyche.”

The Age lauded Ponting’s men for keeping Australia’s 13-year undefeated ODI series run in India intact. “Australia will fly out this week with both its number one ranking and 13-year unbeaten run in one-day series here intact, after taking an unassailable 4-2 lead over India,” the newspaper said. “Forty-five minutes of lethal new-ball bowling from Doug Bollinger and Mitchell Johnson paved the way for the six-wicket win at the Nehru Stadium at Guwahati.”

Dhoni’s gamble to bat first on a tricky track backfired and the match virtually slipped out of their hand in nine overs when the home side was gasping at 27 for five.

“During the toss I said that the first half hour will be crucial for us but the first 15 minutes proved more than enough,” Dhoni said after the match. “We lost quite a few wickets and after that we never really were in the game.”

With this win, Australia took an unassailable 4-2 lead in the series reaffirming their supremacy as the best team in the world. For Australia, pace duo of Doug Bollinger (5/35) and Mitchell Johnson 3/39) made merry on a wicket which offered generous movement even though Dhoni defended his decision to bat first and felt a score in the vicinity of 220 could have been enough.

“Of course, there was a bit of movement in the wicket but overall I think the Australians bowled really well. We could have batted second, looking at the conditions but then also it would have been tough because the spinners were getting great amount of turn. I think we were fortunate enough to score 170, as at one stage, even 150 was looking tough. We fell short by 50-55 runs,” Dhoni said.

The Indian captain said losing a couple of close games made all the difference in the series.

“The Mohali game followed by the Hyderabad game, we should have won both. In both the matches the Australians took the game away from us. A couple of mistakes we made in the field and we lost the games,” he added.

His counterpart Ricky Ponting, meanwhile, lauded his team for their spirited display, especially after losing some of their key players to injuries and said it was a memorable series win for him.

“I couldn’t be happier. (This is) probably one of the best series I have been involved with. It was heartening to see the boys gel as a group especially after so many injuries. The performance of the team in the last two games has been satisfying,” an ecstatic Ponting said. “It means a lot because it was a great challenge to come and beat India at their home, especially when you have not got your main players. In every match we had to change and chop players and that made it even harder. Performance of all the guys has been outstanding. The bowlers really bowled well today, Johnson and Bollinger were outstanding. Once we got the five wickets, we thought we had taken the control of the game,” Ponting said.

“It swung a little bit in the morning and was also two paced early on. But our new ball bowlers really did a great job for us,” he added about the ball.

Man-of-the-match Bollinger said he just stuck to his basics and it worked for him. “I am really happy today and it’s great to see everything coming together. I really had a great time here. I just wanted to use the conditions as much as I can and it worked,” he said.

What makes it more special for the Aussies is that they were without four key players at the beginning of the series and lost four more during the series. But they showed remarkable spirit and temperament to win the series with one match to go.

Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni won the toss and to everyone’s surprise decided to bat first on a damp wicket under heavy weather conditions. India were soon reeling at 27 for 5 with the entire top order back in the hut, thanks to some outstanding swing bowling by Mitchell Johnson and Doug Bollinger. The hosts could just not recover from there, getting bowled out for a modest 170. The Aussies then chased down the target in just 41.5 overs to finish off the game and win the series.

Virender Sehwag (6) opened the Indian innings with a six over point of Mitchell Johnson in the very first over. But that’s all he could manage as Johnson cleaned him up with a fast in-swinger on the fourth ball of the over. Johnson struck again one ball later, this time with a perfect out-swinger, rattling the stumps of Gautam Gambhir (0) and India were 7-2 at the end of the first over.

Doug Bollinger then accounted for Sachin Tendulkar (10), the master playing one straight back to the bowler. Yuvraj (6) was the next to go in what may be one of the most absurd dismissals ever in the history of the game. The ball ricocheted off Yuvraj’s pad over his right shoulder and as Yuvraj, clueless about where the ball went, turned behind to place the bat back inside the crease, he pushed it back to the stumps. Raina (0) went soon caught by Hauritz at mid-on off the bowling of Johnson and India were 27-5 in the 9^th over.

At that stage, even a three digit score seemed a distant possibility for the hosts. Fortunately for them, Ravindra Jadeja (57) and Praveen Kumar (54 not out), who slammed his maiden ODI half-century, did not throw in the towel and pushed the score to 170 in 48 overs before the hosts were bowled out, once again without using up their full quota of 50 overs. With the team in dire straits, Jadeja first added 48 runs with skipper Dhoni (24) and starred in a vital 74-run stand for the eighth wicket with Praveen to save India the blushes of being bowled out under 100.

Doug Bollinger (5/35) and Mitchell Johnson (3/39) shared eight wickets between them to virtually knock India out of the game.

Chasing a modest 171 to win, Australia rode on Shane Watson’s 49 off 49 balls while skipper Ricky Ponting (25) and Cameron White (25) chipped in with useful contributions before Michael Hussey (35 not out) and Adam Voges (23 not out) guided them to a comfortable win with more than 8 overs to spare.

Harbhajan Singh tried hard to make a match out of it finishing with figures of 2 for 23 off his 10 overs but 170 was always going to be difficult to defend.

Were the conditions so bad that the ball was swinging wildly? No. Was the pitch aiding alarming movement? No. Well, there was just a little bit of movement, in the air and off the pitch. India just needed to bat through the first hour and it would have been easy pickings after that but Australia exploited the conditions superbly to bundle India out and re-affirm their supremacy in the game.

The last match of the series will be played in Mumbai on Wednesday.

Brief Scores:

Australia 172 for 4 (Watson 49, Hussey 35*) beat India 170 (Jadeja 57, Praveen 54*, Bollinger 5-35) by six wickets

Man of the Match: Doug Bollinger.

Still dejected by India’s three run defeat in Hyderabad, Jadeja said that he tried to sneak in a quick single in the 48^th over because he thought that the ball went in no man’s land and he wanted to get the strike back.

“After Sachin got out, I wanted to finish things off,” Jadeja said. “I wanted to get the strike and thought the ball was going to a no man’s land. Instead, it went straight to the fielder (Cameron White) and I had come a long distance. It was difficult to get back to the crease.”

Incidentally, Jadeja was dismissed run out in a similar fashion in the fourth one-dayer at Mohali, where India lost by 24 runs. “I feel very disappointed. We lost both the matches after getting so near,” said the youngster.

Tendulkar and Jadeja added 32 for seventh wicket at Hyderabad and with the Powerplay on, it seemed a matter of time before India clinched a memorable victory. But after Tendulkar got out scoring a superb 175, India crumbled, with Jadeja following suit in the same over. “We could have made it easily. We were 18 runs away with more than two overs remaining,” Jadeja said.

The defeat notwithstanding, one thing Jadeja said he would cherish forever is watching Tendulkar from the other end on a day that belonged to the Little Master. “It was great to play the partner’s role in that epic innings of Tendulkar. He was very supportive and on every ball he was telling me to play my natural game. He was telling me to take my strokes and building my confidence. It’s sad that we could not see the team through,” Jadeja said.

However, the Saurashtra player, who has earlier drawn a lot of praise from his Rajasthan Royals skipper Shane Warne, was confident that India would win the remaining two one-dayers to clinch the series. “(In the last match) we gave Australia a very close game and we almost won it. If we can get near to 350, it means we can chase any total,” he said confidently.

The BCCI’s Tour Programmes and Fixtures Committee met here today and decided that Guwahati, Delhi, Mumbai, Mohali, Hyderabad, Nagpur and Jaipur will host matches in the India-Australia ODI rubber in October-November.

Eden Gardens, which can now accommodate 90,000 fans and hosted the final of the 1987 World Cup between England and eventual winners Australia, has missed out again from the list. The last ODIs played in front of the cricket-crazy Kolkata fans was held on February 8, 2007, between India and Sri Lanka.

The venue, revered by visiting teams, also hosted its last Test match against Pakistan between November 30 and December 4, 2007. The venues for ODIs and Tests are allotted by the BCCI on a rotation basis, and it’s surprising to see Eden Gardens not getting an international tie for so long.

Incidentally, Cricket Association of Bengal is headed by Jagmohan Dalmiya who is facing charges of misappropriation of funds raised when India hosted the 1996 World Cup jointly with Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Delhi, Mumbai, Mohali, Hyderabad, Nagpur and Jaipur were the other six cities chosen for the series.

Guwahati was scheduled to host the final India-England ODI last year in November but Kevin Pietersen and his men returned home midway through the series after the Mumbai terror attacks. The match had looked in trouble even before that because of serial blasts in the North Eastern city.

A couple of years earlier, the city lost out on hosting the two teams due to bad weather which led to crowd violence.

BCCI’s Tour Programme and Fixtures Committee decided that the match schedule for the India-Australia would be finalised after the logistics are worked out, Board secretary N Srinivasan, who chaired the meeting in the absence of Lalit Modi, said in a statement.

The domestic schedule for the season was also drawn up. It was decided that the Duleep Trophy would be held on a knock-out basis and South Zone would host the inaugural edition of the BCCI Corporate Trophy from September 1-8.

The 12 participating teams in the Inter-Corporate tournament would be divided into three groups of four sides each and matches will be played on league-cum-knockout basis.

“The inter-state Mushtaq Ali T20 Trophy, that was not held in the previous season, will be held,” Srinivasan said.

Women cricketers would be playing only limited overs matches, one-dayers and T20 ties.

In junior cricket, the C K Nayudu Trophy for under-22 players and the Cooch Behar Trophy for under-19 cricketers would be played in a two-tier format – Elite Group and Plate Group – on a home and away basis.