Ravindra Jadeja and Shikhar Dhawan were the stars as India entered the semifinals of the ICC Champions Trophy 2013 in some style following a comfortable eight-wicket win over the West Indies.
A partisan crowd at The Oval were treated to some brilliant bowling, fielding and batting by India as M.S. Dhoni and co. dominated from start to finish, knocking their biggest rivals Pakistan out of the tournament.
The India vs Pakistan match is now meaningless in the context of the tournament - even if it will still have an edge to it - while West Indies and South Africa now do battle in a virtual quarterfinal.
Put into bat, the West Indies made a decent start, despite the early dismissal of Chris Gayle, with Johnson Charles making an aggressive 60 (55b, 7x4, 2x6) to take the score past 100 in under 20 overs.
However, once Jadeja dismissed the opening batsman, who was also standing in as the wicketkeeper in place of the suspended Denesh Ramdin, West Indies crumbled under the sustained pressure from India.
"I think this is one of my best bowling performances, I can say that, because I got three times four-wickets in my career," the all-rounder said. "So this is the first time I got five wickets, so I'm very happy. I'm very happy that I got five wickets. So this is one of my best performances in ODI cricket."
Jadeja would go on to pick up four more wickets to finish with figures of five for 36, but the final five overs belonged to Darren Sammy 56 (35b, 5x4, 4x6), who was overlooked for the first match, with the former ODI captain blitzing the Indian bowlers to take the score to at least 233 for nine.
"We got off to a very good start," Bravo said. "Even though we lost Chris early, Johnson Charles and young Darren reconstructed the innings. But we lost our way again in the middle where we keep losing wickets.
"And that's a bit of a concern to us, not only in this game, but in previous games. We really have to try and the batters have to take more responsibility to bat the bulk of the overs in order to get good totals so our bowlers can actually defend.
"We lost our way in the middle. Yes, they bowled well also, but I think more so most of us played bad shots at the wrong time and allowed India to actually dominate the game."
In reply, the India openers - Dhawan and Rohit Sharma -- put up their second consecutive 100-run partnership, with Dhawan (102, 107b, 10x4, 1x6) carrying on to make his second hundred in a row as India made the chase look as easy as it could possibly have been.
Sharma got off to a fine start, but again failed to convert a fifty into a hundred, falling for 52 (56b, 7x4), before Dinesh Karthik (51, 54b, 8x4) allied with Dhawan, who reached his century with a brilliant six over third man, for 106 runs for the third wicket to ease India to victory and book themselves a place in the semifinals.
