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India ease to series win

Hyderabad - India have eased to a six-wicket victory over Sri Lanka in the third ODI and claiming the five-match series, on a hard Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium surface in Hyderabad on Sunday.

The supersport.com website reports that the top-order batsmen all came to the party, building their reply around Shikhar Dhawan's 79-ball 91, and Virat Kohli had a welcome return to form with 53.

Wriddhiman Saha struck the winning runs in the 45th over to conclude another one-sided contest.

Earlier, Mahela Jayawardene struck his 17th ODI century to guide Sri Lanka to 242.

Sri Lanka committed the cardinal sin of not batting out their 50 overs, leaving 10 deliveries unused, however, they would be quite relieved that they managed to get this far into their innings.

The visitors were in real trouble on 158 for seven before Jayawardene (118) and Seekkuge Prasanna put some backbone into the innings with 67 runs for the eighth wicket.

Having opted to bat, Sri Lanka's innings started off in terrible fashion, as they lost Kusal Perera (4) and Kumar Sangakkara for a first-ball duck, but Tillakaratne Dilshan (50) and Jayawardene calmed the nerves, adding 105 for the third wicket.

A middle-order collapse of four wickets for 14 runs, required the mastery of Jayawardene (who passed 12 000 ODI runs in the process) to put the visitors in a position from which they have a chance to keep the series alive.

Jayawardene hit 12 fours and a six and faced 124 balls in his rescue act.

Umesh Yadav bagged 4-53 and Akshar Patel took 3-40.

The tour now moves to Kolkata for the fourth match on Thursday. The final encounter will be in Ranchi in a week's time.

Teams:

India: S Dhawan, AM Rahane, V Kohli (captain), AT Rayudu, SK Raina, WP Saha (wicketkeeper), R Ashwin, UT Yadav, DS Kulkarni, I Sharma, AR Patel

Sri Lanka: MDKJ Perera, TM Dilshan, KC Sangakkara (wicketkeeper), DPMD Jayawardene, AD Mathews (captain), SMA Priyanjan, NLTC Perera, KMDN Kulasekara, S Prasanna, PLS Gamage, PC de Silva

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