MS Dhoni praises India match-winner Manish Pandey

MS Dhoni was impressed after Manish Pandey rose to the challenge of guiding India to a consolation victory in a one-day thriller against Australia at the SCG on Saturday.

India dramatically collapsed in Canberra on Wednesday to go 4-0 down, but pulled off an epic run chase in the final game of the series four days later.

Mitchell Marsh (102 not out) scored his maiden international century and David Warner (122) also reached three figures as Australia posted a daunting 330-7 after being put in by Dhoni.

Rohit Sharma (99) came agonisingly close to a third ton of the series and Shikhar Dhawan made a blistering 78, but the series finale went right down to wire.

India needed 13 to win off the final over from Marsh and Dhoni (34) was out after launching a six, but Pandey (104 not out from 81 balls) held his nerve to bring up his maiden century for India and then hit the winning runs with two balls to spare.

A series dominated by the batsmen saw 3159 runs scored - a record for a bilateral series of five ODIs or less - and Dhoni was relieved to avoid a whitewash.

The India captain said: "Last time we spoke about our batsmen being young and how they will be successful over time across all conditions if persisted with

"This is a result of sustaining with the same set of players. The top order has been together for a long time now. They are all experienced.

"Especially in this series, considering all the matches have produced 300-plus totals, you needed that, and so the experience counts. Where we have been hurt is our lower-order batting, that's where Manish did really well today."