A SENSATIONAL spell from Jason Behrendorff laid the foundations and Moises Henriques finished the job as Australia forced a decider in their Twenty20 international series against India with a brilliant eight-wicket victory at Guwahati.

Behrendorff ripped through the hosts’ top order as he became the first man to take four wickets in a T20I for Australia against India, returning figures of 4-21 in a hugely impressive stint.
After bowling a single over on debut in the nine-wicket loss in Ranchi on Saturday, the 27-year-old produced a display that could well catch the attention of selectors ahead of the Ashes.
Henriques put on an unbeaten 62 as part of an unbroken 109-run union with Travis Head (48), as Australia recovered from early losses to earn a chance to make up for their defeat in the ODI series in the final T20I at Hyderabad.
After seeing two of his first three deliveries sent to the boundary by Rohit Sharma (8), Behrendorff trapped him leg-before with an inswinger and had two wickets before the end of the over.
The left-armer became the first man to remove Virat Kohli for a duck in a T20I when he caught and bowled the India skipper off an almost identical delivery.
Manish Pandey (6) slashed an outside edge to Tim Paine before a stunning catch from the backpedalling stand-in captain David Warner secured Behrendorff’s fourth wicket of the match.
Kedar Jadhav (27) and Hardik Pandya (25) were the only players to surpass 16 as India were restricted to 118, Adam Zampa taking 2-19 and claiming the scalp of MS Dhoni (13) while some brilliant fielding from Paine saw him sling down the stumps to run-out Jasprit Bumrah (7).
The hosts were not going to make the chase easy for Australia and Kohli let out a huge roar after catching Warner (2) at cover off Bumrah (1-25), the skipper then taking Aaron Finch’s (8) attempt to slap Bhuvneshwar Kumar (1-9) through the same area.
However, spinners Yuzvendra Chahal (0-29) and Kuldeep Yadav (0-46) failed to make further in-roads as Henriques and Head found the boundary with punctuated regularity.
Henriques launched four sixes – two in succession off Kuldeep in the penultimate over – and fittingly got Australia over the line by finding the ropes with a shot down the ground with 27 balls to spare. (Omnisport)