Australia shed innocent blood in Mohali

By John Cheeran
World champions Australia murdered Indian bowlers in Mohali to move into the semifinals of the ICC Champions Trophy on Sunday. For the record, Australia beat India by six wickets with plenty of overs to spare.
The ease with which Australia secured victory would demoralize skipper Rahul Dravid for days to come.
He would have realized what a rag tag band of bowlers are at his disposal when first Adam Gilchrist, then Damien Martyn and Ricky Ponting played punishing strokes with utter disdain.
India lost the match in the first 10 overs of Australian innings.
Indian seam attack brought tears to those who watched the game.
Each one of them – Munaf Patel, Irfan Pathan and Sreesanth struggled to find their rhythm and a spot to put the ball to bite back at the batsmen.
Gilchrist and Martyn handled Indian seamers as if they were a bunch of schoolboys who strayed into the Punjab Cricket Association ground. The four wickets that Australia lost on the day were hardly earned by the Indians.
Considering the transformation the wicket underwent (grass shaved off and cracks glued up) for this match India’s score of 249 was below par. Indian total fell short of 40-odd runs and all credit for that should go to the splendid bowling by the Aussie army.
It is no secret that Glenn McGrath frustrated Sachin Tendulkar no end in this crucial clash. Eventually the truth must be told. Again in a crucial clash, world’s number one batsman’s contribution was the smallest in Indian ranks today.
In hindsight, it is simply astonishing that Dravid left his best spinner Ramesh Powar in the sidelines for this match. As he did against West Indies where India should have sealed the semifinal place. Powar could have at least troubled the Aussies with his turn and he is relatively strange commodity for the Aussies. Aussies these days have the measure of Harbhajan Singh.
India approached this match without having enough confidence in their batting which was natural if you consider their recent string of poor scores. But taking Dinesh Mongia as the seventh batsman in the side and promoting him eventually into No.3 slot was a strategy that was going to back fire. And it did.
Indian batting failed to hammer Australian bowling in the last 10 overs. It was pathetic to see Mohammad Kaif and Suresh Raina struggling to bisect the field placements stroke after stroke.
If there was any positives for India from this match it was Virender Sehwag's return to form.
Sehwag still struggled but a half-century against Australia should be taken as signal of his success. But in the context of what followed, it turned out to be insignificant.
The savage way Aussies went about their run chase should force the celebrated Indian batting to do some serious soul searching.