Rohit Sharma hit a century and Virat Kohli a bright 74 to drive India to a nine-wicket win in the third one-day international on Saturday, sending fans home happy after what are likely to be their final appearances in Australia in their country’s colours.<\/p>\n
Australia secured series honours with victories in the first two matches in Perth and Adelaide but India’s bowlers skittled the home side for 236 and the two former skippers got the tourists over the line with a partnership of 168 runs.<\/p>\n
“I’ve always loved coming here and a nice way to finish getting that knock and getting that win as well,” said Rohit.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know if we’ll be coming back to Australia, but it was fun all these years that we played here. A lot of good memories, bad memories. But all in all, I’ll take the cricket that I played here.”<\/p>\n
Kohli, the second-highest run-scorer in ODIs behind Sachin Tendulkar, came out to join Sharma at the crease to a frenzied ovation from a big crowd that made the Sydney Cricket Ground feel more like it was located in New Delhi than New South Wales.<\/p>\n
Rohit had already combined with current skipper Shubman Gill (24) to cut 69 runs out of the chase but this was the “Ro-Ko” partnership the massed ranks of fans in blue shirts waving tricolour flags had come to see.<\/p>\n
The two thirtysomethings, who both now only play the 50-over game for India, duly delivered with assured shots and mature decision-making that frustrated then dispirited the Australian bowlers.<\/p>\n
Rohit smashed 13 fours and three sixes in his 33rd century in the format, reaching the milestone for the ninth time against Australia with a pushed drive down the ground for a single.<\/p>\n
Kohli, who had been dismissed for ducks in the previous two matches, brought up his 75th half-century to a huge roar with a single on one ball and Rohit locked in a 19th ODI century stand between the pair with another solitary run on the next delivery.<\/p>\n
“When we bat together even back in the day, we used to think, if we have a big partnership, the kind of strokes we can play, we can really take the game away from the opposition,” said Kohli.<\/p>\n
“The opposition also knew that if these guys are in for 20 overs together, any total is chaseable.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":13792,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-13791","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Rohit smashed 13 fours and three sixes in his 33rd century in the format, reaching the milestone for the ninth time against Australia.","published_date":null,"news_description":"Rohit smashed 13 fours and three sixes in his 33rd century in the format, reaching the milestone for the ninth time against Australia.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/13791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/13791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18748,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/13791\/revisions\/18748"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=13791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}