The game began on the worst possible note for India, who won the toss and elected to bat first. Brett Lee's first over produced four byes, one wide, but more importantly two wickets. First to go was Sourav Ganguly, who was brilliantly run out by Brad Hodge. Rahul Dravid was the next to go when Lee trapped him in front of the wicket.

Dravid has never looked the same after he gave up the captaincy and India never recovered from those blows even though Sachin Tendulkar made 47 in his 400th One-Day International. It spoke volumes of a batting failure that the next highest score was 28 make by number 10 batsman Zaheer Khan.

Yuvraj Singh (1), Robin Uthappa (5) and skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni (4) were all Johnson’s victims in a deadly first spell. The seamer returned to claim the wickets of Irfan Pathan who made 26 and Murali Kartik.

The total was never going to test Australia and although Dhoni elected to start with Harbhajan Singh, the world champions got home in the 26th over with Adam Gilchrist making 79 off 77 balls and Ponting making 39 off 39 balls faced. Hayden was the only loss for the visitors making 29 before he was bowled by R P Singh.

Mitchell Johnson deservedly was the Man of the Match.
 

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