5 instances when India's batting line-up choked while chasing in ODIs

On Wednesday, we saw the Indian cricket team losing against Australia in Canberra despite looking like overwhelming favourites for most parts of the chase. This wasn’t the first instance of India losing from a situation where they looked like they would win a match easily with the bat.What might surprise readers is that just one of the five instances mentioned in this article occured outside India. As one would expect, Sachin Tendulkar was a lone warrior in a couple of these matches.Here are 5 times when the Indian batting line-up choked while chasing a target in ODIs:

#5 vs Australia - Kolkata, 2003

159/4 to 198 all out

The first of three matches on this list that features the Australian cricket team, this was the final of the TVS Cup in 2003 - a tournament in which New Zealand were the third team.

In the absence of Sourav Ganguly, the Men in Blue were led by Rahul Dravid who lost the toss to his Australian counterpart Ricky Ponting who elected to bat first. The world champions huffed and puffed their way to 235/5 from 50 overs, mainly thanks to an unbeaten 28-ball 44 from a young Michael Clarke.

During the chase, India were 159/4 at the start of the 35th over, needing 77 runs to win from 16 overs. That was when Clarke proved to be the difference with the ball in his hand – picking up the wickets of Hemang Badani and Dravid, which led to a massive collapse from India’s batting line-up.

Ajit Agarkar tried his best with an unbeaten 26 at a brisk pace, but he found no support from the other end and India were bowled out for 198.

What would have hurt Indian fans the most was that this was a perfect opportunity for the Indian cricket team to get one over the Australians who had beaten them in the World Cup final earlier that year.