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Sharma and Kohli guide India to victory
SEN • October 26th, 2025 2:52 pm
India’s experienced duo of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli have played vintage knocks in what is likely their last match for India on Australian shores.
Their partnership of 168 runs has helped steer India clear of being clean-swept in their ODI series against Australia as they claimed a nine-wicket victory at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Saturday.
Once again, the visitors would lose the coin toss, which now extends their unusual streak of losing it to 18 games.
But this time, Mitch Marsh elected to bat first.
And while all of Australia’s top six of Marsh, Travis Head, Matt Short, Matt Renshaw, Alex Carey and Cooper Connolly would all make starts, none of them were simply not able to turn those into big runs, with Renshaw the only one being able to get past 50.
With the tail being unable to add much, Australia would set a below-par target of 237 for India to chase.
This would leave SEN Cricket’s Bharat Sundaresan towards the end of their innings believing that Australia had blown an opportunity to be in an excellent position.
“Australia has blown this, really,” he said on commentary.
“They were in good positions for a major part of the first 30 overs.”
And India certainly made the most of the chaseable target.
The opening combination of Sharma and Shubman Gill was unbeaten through the powerplay to get India above the required run rate.
But the partnership didn’t survive much longer as Gill would edge a Josh Hazlewood ball to Alex Carey in the 11th over.
However, Virat Kohli and Sharma would put on a show for the Sydney audience.
Kohli, who was looking for redemption after having made back-to-back ducks in his last two innings, certainly delivered with an unbeaten 74.
This would see him pass Kumar Sangakkara to become the second-highest run scorer in ODI cricket.
However, it would be Sharma who claimed the man of the match with an outstanding 121 not out to see the World No.1s claim victory.
Both teams’ attention now turns to their upcoming five-match T20 series.
That begins on October 29 with the first T20 being played at Manuka Oval in Canberra.
SEN will have LIVE coverage of that match starting from 7pm AEDT.
