Australia
 India
 Sri Lanka

 Series
 Aust v India
 Aust v SL
 India v SL
 One-Day Int'l

 Colombo (RPS)
 Colombo (SSC)
 Galle

India crushed as Australia's success reaches record proportions

In yet another tribute to their current dominance in this form of the game, Australia's cricketers have scored another decisive triumph in this year's Aiwa Cup series, defeating an again disappointing India by the margin of 41 runs at the Sinhalese Sports Club Ground in Colombo today.

While this was a triumph which again reflected their all-round strength as a team, the Antipodeans' win in this clash owed much to the talents of four men and was essentially settled by the damage that they were able to inflict upon their opponents with some inspired cricket.  First, it was Adam Gilchrist (77) and Andrew Symonds (45) who lifted their team with a 110 run stand - raising a big partnership for the second wicket in successive matches against this particular foe - which featured some attractive and forceful strokeplay throughout.  And then later in the day, new ball bowlers Jason Gillespie (4/26 off nine fiery overs) and Glenn McGrath (2/55 from ten overs) combined brilliantly to reduce their opponents' batting to tatters and to a position from which a full recovery was almost never genuinely possible.

In the course of the impressive association between two players who seem to have become the chief torchbearers of their side's aggressive upper order batting performance throughout this tournament, Gilchrist was the main aggressor and he typically struck the ball with thunderous power to both sides of the wicket on a consistent basis.  But Symonds suffered little by comparison, and he enhanced his already growing chances of securing a more permanent berth in this team with a solid innings, the main characteristic of which was some intelligent strokemaking off the back foot.  Together, their ability to take their team to the score of 1/150 in the twenty-eighth over provided the Australians with a wonderful early launching pad from which they were never likely to relinquish the advantage.  Darren Lehmann (27) also played well, and it was no coincidence that the Australians' early dominance with the bat began to unravel to some extent when, not for the first time in recent matches, he was the victim of a poor call from Ricky Ponting in the fortieth over.

Indeed, for all of their dominance through the opening and middle overs of the innings, it is true that the Australian batsmen did lose their way significantly toward the end of their effort.  Whilst this had much to do with some mediocre batting - especially from a Ponting (32) who strangely and uncharacteristically looked all at sea in trying to discover his timing - significant credit should also be attributed to Robin Singh and Venkatesh Prasad for some fine bowling at the conclusion of the Australians' exhibition.  Singh (1/40 from eight overs), who looked to have committed a disastrous sin when he added to a long list of dismal Indian fielding errors by botching a straight forward chance to run Ponting (then on 24) out in the forty-second over, fought back strongly with the ball, containing the Australians by operating on a metronomically good line and length throughout his bowling stint.  His dismissal of Steve Waugh (6) - spectacularly caught and bowled - in the course of an excellent forty-second over was particularly important.  Prasad (2/29 off ten overs) was also highly effective at the finish, and his capacity to first crash through the defences of Michael Bevan (7) and then to induce Ponting to loft a catch to deep backward square leg was just as vital.

India's response to what seemed at the time to accordingly be only a moderate total on a relatively placid pitch then began in spectacular fashion when their prolific scoring opener Saurav Ganguly blasted two of the opening three balls of the innings (bowled by McGrath) imperiously through point, but their upper order ultimately wilted under the weight of the task as both McGrath and Gillespie found their mark.  Gillespie, in particular, caused the early Indian batsmen enormous trouble with his speed and his ability to move the ball away from the bat, and his return of 3/17 from his opening seven overs virtually spelled the end of any thoughts of a genuine contest.  Indeed, notwithstanding the fact that the Australians were excellently resisted for some time by a tremendous partnership of 123 for the sixth wicket between Sadagoppan Ramesh (73) and a defiant Singh (72), any vague hopes India did foster of completing what would have been little short of a by that stage miraculous triumph disappeared when Symonds gained some extraordinarily capricious bounce from a delivery in the forty-second over and forced a surprised Ramesh to spoon a simple catch to Mark Waugh at mid-wicket.

Australia's fourth win in the series, and India's third loss, has far from settled the complexion of the Aiwa Cup, but it certainly has condemned the latter to the prospect of having to beat Sri Lanka tomorrow to have any chance of keeping their hopes alive.  What it also showed was that the caution and hesitancy which has permeated India's game over recent months is still a long way from being eliminated.  With or without (as they were today) the presence of Tendulkar, this is a team which is still struggling to match most of the other powers in world cricket.  All the while, this victory hands Australia their equal greatest number of consecutive matches without defeat in the history of one-day international cricket, and such is the almost sublime level of this team's confidence and all-round brilliance at present that it is extremely hard to determine just how and when the run might be halted.