India held their nerve in the final moments to snatch a dramatic eight-run victory over Australia in the fourth One-Day International in Chandighar on Monday.
The victory cut Australia's lead to 2-1 and kept the Indians afloat in the seven-match series.
India's batsmen came good, after Mahendra Singh Dhoni won the toss and elected to bat, and rattled up 291 for four. Their bowlers then did a superb job by restricting the mighty Australians to 283 for seven.
The Australians were cruising comfortably at 268 for 5 till the 46th over when two wickets in the span of two balls completely changed the complexion of the match much to the delight of a vociferous home crowd.
Needing 22 runs from the last two overs, with three wickets in hand, Australia could just manage six run from R P Singh's over after comeback man Murali Kartik compounded problems for the visitors by giving away just two runs in the previous over.
In the final over with the Australians requiring 16 runs, Zaheer conceded a four off the first ball and gave four more runs off the remaining five balls, sending capacity crowd into a frenzy at the Sector 16 stadium which was hosting an international match after a gap of 14 years.
India owed their total to some lusty hitting by Robin Uthappa (30 runs off 18 balls) and captain Dhoni, who slammed 50 off just 35 balls, after Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly(41) provided a solid start.
For the visitors, the in-form Matthew Hayden hit a 92-ball 92 and Andrew Symonds scored 75 but the late order batsmen succumbed to the pressure to give the home team a sensational victory, their first over the Australians since January 2004.
The teams now travel to Vadodara for the fifth game, to be played on Thursday.
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