The trio who made it possible for India

For once the Indian win was not crafted by just a couple of players.

Bikash Mohapatra identifies the three heroes who led the Indian charge to victory.

Several players contributed to India's victory in the Chennai Test.

Sachin Tendulkar scored a tough 81 and hung in there with Cheteshwar Pujara and Virat Johli.

Ravindra Jadeja and debutant Bhuvneshwar Kumar revealed promise and held out the hope that if they continue in this dogged spirit, they could be guys India can rely on in the months to come.

But three men lead the Indian charge to triumph and it is time to salute them.

Captain Glorious

Mahendra Singh Dhoni's flamboyant 224 took the game away from Australia.

When Dhoni came out to bat -- remember the skipper had not hit a hundred since November 2011! -- India was chasing the Australian total (380).

When he was dismissed, his team had nearly clinched victory, having taken a 192-run lead on a deteriorating wicket.

Dhoni surpass both Sachin Tendulkar (217) and Sunil Gavaskar (205) to record the highest score by an Indian captain.

He is also only the second Indian, after Virender Sehwag, to score a double hundred in one day.

The 224 posted Dhoni on the list of highest scores by a wicket-keeper; he is third there, behind Zimbabwe's Andy Flower (232) and New Zealand's Brendon McCullum (225), both knocks having come against India.

Dhoni took the game away from the Aussies. Until then, both sides has some parity. The skipper made all the difference.

Spinning away...

Ravichandran Ashwin was playing his first Test on his home ground, the M A Chidambaram stadium.

And what an occasion it was for the 26-year-old off-spinner!

Career-best figures of 7 for 103 restricted Australia to 380 in the first innings; his seventh five-wicket haul (5 for 95) in the second innings snuffed out the Aussie fightback.

Especially worthy of mention was the ball he brought back to trap Michael Clarke lbw before the Aussie skipper got very dangerous.

Ashwin's match figures of 12 for 198 is the second time he has taken 12 Test wickets -- the first was in the second Test against New Zealand in Hyderabad last August.

Ashwin had an awful series against England -- outshone by both Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar of the visiting side -- and hopefully his Chennai performance augurs well for the future.

Young Turk comes good

The young batsman -- a frontrunner for the Test captaincy if Dhoni steps down -- was involved in two crucial partnerships -- 91 for the fourth wicket with Sachin Tendulkar and 128 for the fifth with his captain.

It was Kohli's second consecutive Test hundred, having scored 103 against England in the fourth Test in Nagpur, and fourth overall.

He had, in fact, scored his first hundred against the Aussies. In January last year, Kohli, playing only his eighth Test, scored 116 in the first innings in the fourth Test at Adelaide.