AHMED­ABAD, In­dia (AP)—Aus­tralia won the Crick­et World Cup for a record-ex­tend­ing sixth time yes­ter­day end­ing In­dia’s dom­i­nant run in its home tour­na­ment with a six-wick­et vic­to­ry in a low-scor­ing fi­nal on the back of Travis Head’s 137.

A heav­i­ly par­ti­san crowd in­side the 132,000-ca­pac­i­ty Naren­dra Mo­di Sta­di­um was si­lenced as Head com­bined with Mar­nus Labuschagne (58 not out ) in a 192-run part­ner­ship to chase down the tar­get of 241.

Aus­tralia was wob­bling on 47-3 af­ter sev­en overs but Head and Labuschagne dug in to help their coun­try re­gain its sta­tus as the king of one-day in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et, adding to its 50-over world ti­tles in 1987, 1999, 2003, 2007 and 2015.

Head was dis­missed off what proved to be the next-to-last ball of the match, caught in the deep while at­tempt­ing to hit a ti­tle-clinch­ing bound­ary. In came Glenn Maxwell and he ran two off his first ball, se­cur­ing a vic­to­ry that prompt­ed fire­works above the world’s largest crick­et venue.

The In­di­ans won all ten of their match­es be­fore the fi­nal and were seek­ing a third tro­phy in their fourth ap­pear­ance in a ti­tle match that brought a coun­try of 1.4 bil­lion peo­ple to a vir­tu­al stand­still. They were out­played in every de­part­ment by Aus­tralia, though, re­strict­ed to 240 all out on a slow pitch af­ter los­ing the toss with on­ly Vi­rat Kohli (54) and Lokesh Rahul (66) mak­ing half-cen­turies.

Head be­came on­ly the sev­enth play­er to score a cen­tu­ry in a men’s World Cup fi­nal—and third Aus­tralian af­ter Ricky Ponting and Adam Gilchrist—and de­liv­ered a sig­nif­i­cant mo­ment in In­dia’s in­nings when tak­ing a div­ing catch run­ning back from cov­er to re­move cap­tain Ro­hit Shar­ma (47).

“What an amaz­ing day, I’m just thrilled to be a part of it,” Head said af­ter­ward. “It’s a lot bet­ter than sit­ting on the couch at home, I’m very lucky that every­thing went well and I was able to get back here.”

Head had start­ed the tour­na­ment side­lined by a bro­ken left hand.

“I was a lit­tle bit ner­vous, but Mar­nus played ex­cep­tion­al and it was just an amaz­ing part­ner­ship. It’s nice to be a part of it, nice to play a role, and it’s go­ing to be an amaz­ing cou­ple of days now,” Head said. “To be able to do that on the big stage, in front of a big crowd, it’s pret­ty spe­cial and some­thing that I’ll be hap­py to look back on lat­er in my life. It’s nice to be here and nice to con­tribute.”

Head’s ton saw him join an il­lus­tri­ous list, which al­so com­pris­es West In­dies’ Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards, as well as Sri Lan­ka’s Ar­avin­da de Sil­va and Ma­hela Jayawar­dene.

Ponting’s 140 not out had al­so helped Aus­tralia beat In­dia in the 2003 fi­nal. Jayawar­dene’s cen­tu­ry is the on­ly one in a los­ing cause with In­dia win­ning the 2011 fi­nal.

Aus­tralia fin­ished the 2023 tour­na­ment with a run of nine straight wins, af­ter start­ing with back-to-back de­feats to In­dia and South Africa.

In­dia won the World Cup in 1983 and 2011. Its last ma­jor suc­cess was win­ning the ICC Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy in 2013.