If India are to have any chance to win, Tendulkar must step and play an innings up to his caliber and Kratik is the best just watching from the stands. But I think this will be one hell of a series…India should put up a great fight :k:
Indian has a good chance of winning tomorrow. This has less to do with who plays how and more to do with what I think. Aussies seem strong and so they should win. But usually I am wrong in my calculations and so Indian will win.
India 31/2 from 10 overs
Sehwag out on 3, Tendulkar clean bowled by Lee for 8
Laxman on 19, not out
Dravid not out...still on 0 from 16 balls.
Pathetic start by Indians. :-(
Indian top four gone…time for Gangualy to play a captain’s innings. Dravid got dismissed by Harvy 
The tailenders are proving to be of great help again. Agarkar with his solid knock of 53 of 59 balls supported by Badani 52 of 70 balls(Not out) got India to a point where they can still hope for a victory.
India.. 208/7 in 46.0 overs.
:)
well it looks like the next one in sydney will be a DO OR DIE encounter for India ..... since they begun so well but now turning out to be like as they were predicted before they arrived down under
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Australia 173/1. Coasting home, looks like a rout.
In recent big finals against Australia, India has choked and here once again they have done the same thing.
The Aussies have made them look so ordinary in this match. Time for the Indians to wake up or the Australians will run away with the finals in the next match.
Some relief for India even though it's quite late with 30 odd runs needed to win ..... Ponting goes after scoring 88 entertaining runs
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all the three wickets to Balaji??? Good performance..he should be my candidate for the man of the match!! after all you dont get to see the scalps of Haydn,Gilchrist and Ponting against a single bowler :)
AUS wins the 1st Final by 7 wickets
Ganguly's expression tells it all
[thumb=E]AUS_vs_IND_115637_6800446.JPG[/thumb]
Well PLayed Aussies and Ricky Ponting:k:
congrats to aussies
India let down by top order](BBC SPORT | Cricket | India let down by top order)
Sourav Ganguly put the blame on his top order batsmen following India’s seven-wicket defeat by Australia in the first VB final match in Melbourne.
“If you are 70-6 in a one-day game at the end of the 20th over then you’re struggling,” the Indian skipper said.
India were eventually bowled out for 222 and Australia reached their target with 9.5 overs to spare.
“The way we approached our batting today was sensational,” Australian captain Ricky Ponting commented.
“We’ve got a lot of confidence now. Heading down to Sydney, we’ve played some good cricket there of late and if we keep executing the way we did today, then we’re going to be hard to beat again.”
Ponting top scored with 88 and was named Man of the Match, but he paid tribute to opener Adam Gilchrist for setting the tone for the innings with his 38 off 20 balls.
"We were 40 odd after five or six overs and that was where the game was really taken away from India.
“Gilly’s been hitting the ball beautifully over the last few weeks and hopefully he can do the same down in Sydney.”
Ponting paid tribute to India for achieving a respectable total after such a poor start to their innings.
Ajit Agarkar’s 53 helped India post a respectable score
“We bowled particularly well early on and took the chances, which set us up for the rest of the game. To get 220 was a pretty good effort by them,” he added.
India must now regroup and find a way to combat Australia’s seam attack.
VVS Laxman’s 24 was the highest score among their top five, with Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag and Ganguly himself all failing to reach double figures.
"The lower order did well to get us to 222 which is a positive thing for us. If we can get runs up at the top, it will be a good game in Sydney.
"I don’t think you can blame our bowlers, it’s just that we didn’t have enough runs on the board.
“Australia played well. They’re a good side, as the whole world knows,” Ganguly commented.
Cracks start to show for India](BBC SPORT | Cricket | Cracks start to show for India)
India’s listless showing in the first VB Series final suggested they may be coming to the end of their tether.
It has been a long and, at times, highly successful two-and-a-half months in Australia for Sourav Ganguly’s team.
But it has also been very taxing, both physically and mentally.
They will return home with an enhanced reputation regardless of what happens in the second game in Sydney on Sunday.
Notoriously bad travellers, India have done well to stave off travel sickness for this long.
But they were palpably yearning for the dead, dusty pitches of home last week when they were hammered by Australia and taken all the way by Zimbabwe in Perth.
The Waca is not India’s idea of a batting track, and though Ganguly and his fellow batsmen were quick to deny it, the two matches left them shaken.
It suits Brett Lee, however, and he rocked India with his aggression and brute speed after performing poorly since his return from injury.
Even Zimbabwe’s battalion shook up the Indian batsmen, and conspiracy theorists could say it was clever scheduling to delay the Perth fixtures until just before the finals.
And so it was that the India top-order fronted up at the MCG on Friday looking timid and disoriented.
It was a faithful gesture by Ganguly to bat first after winning the toss, but at no stage were his batsmen up with the pace of the game.
India’s position after 22 overs of 75-6 was an accurate reflection of affairs, and though the pitch was a little two-paced early on they had no one to blame but themselves.
With the possible exception of VVS Laxman, none of the celebrated top six perished trying to take the challenge up to Australia.
The dismissals were soft; a million miles from the marauding efforts that typified India’s better efforts on this tour.
If anything, the admirable half-centuries to Hemang Badani and Ajit Agarkar served only to show up the batsmen above them, as they certainly had no impact on the result.
Australia may have had their problems this season, but they know the time of day when it comes to the big games.
They blew India out of the water in the finals of last year’s World Cup and TVS Cup, and their domination of India in one-day cricket continued apace with a clinical approach to their run-chase.
Although lasting just six overs, Adam Gilchrist’s hurricane 38 put India’s paceman off balance and Australia on course for victory.
And then there was Ricky Ponting, the skipper who typifies Australia’s big-match mentality.
His 88 was fully deserving of a century, while his captaincy in the field betrayed a mind that is warming to the task.
Bringing on medium-pacer Ian Harvey to bowl the 15th over, with India three down and anxious to score, was a master stroke.
Even cooler-than-cool Rahul Dravid was tempted to have a go while the fielding restrictions were up, only to edge to Matthew Hayden, who had been placed at slip the ball before.
India have to find a way to raise their game in Sydney, and the SCG pitch will be more to their liking.
Of course, they are still alive. But if events in Melbourne are anything to go by, India may already have fallen prone to thoughts about the return flight home.
Drop the openers!!!!! IT's better to have Gavaskar and Bhandari in Sydney than shewag and sachin. If these 2 play (as they will) we'll lose again.
You cannot simply drop players of the calibre of Shewag and Sachin especially in a must win match.
the aussies comfortably steam-rolled the indians and may i add,
- ha ha and ha *
India aik do match jeet kar to sar per hi char gay thay. is dafa bhi kya pitch sahi nahi thi ya koi or excuse hay…