The Indian huddle celebrated like a team possessed. It was fair enough, considering that Matthew Wade, Australia’s top-scorer until then, was dismissed in the previous over for an excruciatingly slow innings of 45.

Now, just four balls later, the third umpire had indicated that Hussey had been out of his crease when Dhoni’s toppled the bails off Suresh Raina’s bowling. But Bruce Oxenford, the TV umpire, realised he had pressed the wrong button.

Before Hussey could cross over the boundary ropes, on-field umpire Billy Bowden grabbed him by his arm and dragged him back to the pitch.

In hindsight, despite Ben Hilfenhaus’s maiden five-wicket haul in ODI cricket and Brett Lee’s return to form with three crucial Indian strikes, the Hussey stumping/non-stumping was the outright turning point of the match. When the incident occurred, India had Australia on a sleeper hold – at 4.17 runs/over.

By the time Hussey walked off the field for real in the 44th over as Australia’s top-scorer with 59, they were going at a shade above five.

The Aussie innings ended at 288 for five in 50 overs, thanks to the platform that Hussey had built for them. Dan Christian constructed a tower on it with his pyro, with the lower middle-order scoring 91 runs in the last 10 overs.

India would lose by roughly that margin at the end of the match, one that bore striking resemblance to each of their spineless defeats in the Test series. The presence of a rampaging Hilfenhaus with the ball only added to that appearance of outright humiliation.

Bogeyman returns

Hilfenhaus had been the leading wicket-taker in the Test series from both sides, with 27 scalps to his credit. But the only blotch to his fine record was that he had not claimed Sachin Tendulkar's wicket this summer even once. He added Tendulkar to his list of scalps on Sunday when the Indian batsman was caught by Xavier Doherty at third man.

Rohit Sharma was dismissed for nought, and India found themselves at 16 for 3. Hilfenhaus made it four with Kohli’s scalp in the 11th over. While Suresh Raina put up some resistance at No.6, the score always looked beyond him with the pacers dishing out the short-pitched stuff in abundance.