Opting to bat on a slowish wicket, India were found wanting against the pace of Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc while they had little answers for Shane Watson's guile.
Watson (3/34), and Cummins (2/16) shared five wickets between them while Starc removed one batsman.
The experiment to promote Irfan Pathan as makeshift opener partially paid off as he made a scratchy 31 and was the top scorer while most of the other batsmen failed to cross 20.
Yuvraj Singh and Virat Kohli were done in by short deliveries, Rohit Sharma found pace too hot to handle.
Skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni paid for his indiscretion. Suresh Raina (26) and Ravichandran Ashwin (16 not out) who hit a few meaty blows added 29 runs for the seventh wicket to rescue India after being precariously placed at 104 for six.
It was interesting that on a pitch which was considered to aid spinners, Australian pacers bowled with lot of fire sticking to their strengths.
Gautam Gambhir struck three boundaries before he was run-out in the third over. Cummins successfully booted the ball onto the stumps while the opener was still short of his ground. The left-hander managed only 17.
Failure is a rare phenomenon for Virat Kohli (15) these days and he started with couple of boundaries before mis-timing a pull shot of a short-pitch delivery from Cummins as Dan Christian took a well judged catch.
Yuvraj Singh has done precious little in any of the games since coming to Sri Lanka and the script didn
