India Vs England, 4th Test Match, Day 3:
Finally Indian cricket team has entered into the Final of World Test Championship!! Well done!!
They have been magnificent throughout. Despite the changes in calculation rules mid-way through the WTC, they have still managed to reach the final with series wins over Australia and England
Final frontier is facing NZ at Lord's. India have only lost one series in WTC and that was against NZ, so they'll have chance to set that record straight too.
Of course qualifying for WTC was important, but these two coming-from-behind series wins- one in Australia and now in India haven themselves been extraordinary.
Today, once again it was the duo of #Ashwin and #Axar who finished the job with 5-wicket hauls each. India's close-in fielders have been brilliant too. As far as slip-catching is concerned, Ajinkya as has been magnificent. Overall Indians have been good in the field in last 3 games.
In the first session #Sundar and #Axar put on brilliant partnership and made sure that India got lead of more than 150, sadly both missed out on milestones.
#WashingtonSundar really deserved the hundred!! 💔 He was left stranded on 96* as he ran out of partners from other end. Absolutely brilliant knock nonetheless. Well played Sir! Earlier in this series also he had remained not out on 85. Today, #AxarPatel was playing well and accompanying Sundar, but he unfortunately got run out and then it was just a matter of time before Ishant and Siraj got out easily.Axar himself missed out on well deserved fifty. #BenStokes kept it simple, he bowled full and straight; and finished the job.
This has been a wonderful series for many reasons. Certainly Rishabh Pant's batting and wicket-keeping on these tracks have been simply brilliant. #Rohit made some really important runs including that 161 in Chennai. Of course Ashwin was brilliant throughout with ball as he ended up with 32 wickets in series and with bat as he got hundred in Chennai. Axar had amazing debut series with 27 wickets in 3 games. Sundar has proved himself invaluable with his batting and showed he can bowl well too whenever called upon.
Form of three senior players #Kohli, #Rahane and #Pujara certainly is a big worry for India. They did play some good innings here and there, but by their standards, this has been a bad series. Of course this is not the time to talk about it. This is the time to enjoy the series win. Despite not being in good form himself, Kohli as captain in last three tests has been really good and Rahane captained brilliantly in Virat's absence in Australia too. Of course Pujara was fantastic in Australia and one bad series doesn't make you a bad player, but these home conditions are his bread and butter, so I kind of expected loads of runs from Pujara especially.
England certainly made selection blunder in this game by picking only 3 proper bowlers in such testing conditions and even among those 3, Dom Bess is not that experiencd and bit under-confident at the moment. It was always going to backfire despite Ben Stokes bowling his heart out. One extra fast bowler and things could have ended differently. Also on this wicket, there was no vicious turn or extra help for spinners, so no excuses. Of course English team themselves and captain #Root himself never complained too much, it was the loud noise from outsiders only.
- Onkar Karandikar
No comments:
Post a Comment