Incredible Brisbane Victory: India Lift Border-Gavaskar Trophy Overwhelming Australia 2-1!
Rishabh Pant
It was a rare of
the rarest moments in the history of Test Cricket with a Test match going down
the wire till the last mandatory overs and converting itself into a T20-like
situation as India needed around 50-odd runs from the last 10 overs and
Australia needed to capture 5 wickets. That too, in the fifth and final day of
the match with India batting last facing a daunting target 328 runs for victory
or to suffer defeat or to save the match and the Series. This was also like a classic
tennis game with match points and Series points over a breathtaking and
suspenseful period of time.
And, who could be
a better player than Rishabh Pant in that T20 moments? Conclusively for the
team, Pant blossomed into tremendous form from the third Test in Sydney and
started doing what he had been expected to do since a long while, irrespective
of the formats of the game concerned. With more successful players in the
shortest formats, Washington Sundar and Shardul Thakur giving him company! Pant
did it in his unique style and aggression hitting a four to wrest victory from
an increasingly desperate Australian side, with just two overs more to go. This
is a victory that would make the pioneers of the IPL really proud, at long
last.
Washington Sundar
Yes, India has accomplished
a task considered by many to be almost impossible, particularly after that
36-all-out syndrome in the first Test in Sydney, and lifted the Border-Gavaskar
Trophy beating the hosts 2-1 in the four-Test Series with this incredible
historic victory in Brisbane, the last Australian fortress to be conquered, by
3 wickets. We cannot afford to overlook the fact that the ultimate heroes of
this victory are indeed the duo of Washington Sundar-Shardul Thakur for their
historic 123-run partnership in the Indian first innings that brought India
back into the game. This was Sundar’s test debut and Thakur played just one
test before this. Then, there are the other youngsters: Mohammad Siraj, Subhman
Gill, debutant Natarajan and Navdeep Saini who held their nerves and performed
heroically overcoming their supposed inexperience.
This point brings
us to another fact that Team India fielded for the Brisbane Test was without their
striking bowlers, Jasprit Bumrah, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Mohammad
Shami and Umesh Yadav who were all in the injured list, not to speak of the
on-leave regular captain Virat Kohli. This all-important fact augurs really
well for the future of Indian Cricket, because now there are young, eager, fit,
aggressive and competitively capable cricketers who can be called for field
duty anytime needed and with confidence. On the batting youngsters, Gill really
shone (91 in this match) showing great promise for the future; and of course, Mayank
Agarwal and Prithvi Shaw still need to go miles before hopefully cementing their
places in the team. However, all of them are superb cricketers making the
reserves of Team India really an energetically vibrant place.
R Ashwin
The whole of the
Test Series between India and Australia had been an exciting, intensely-fought
and absorbing affair. But for the ‘36’ incident the first test in Adelaide
could have gone India’s way too; led and batted brilliantly by the stand-in captain
Ajinkya Rahane the Melbourne test was won by India making the Series level, and
this team-performance was just astounding as many considered the team was gone
and out after that catastrophic 36; the third test in Sydney was marked by one
of the most memorable fightbacks in world test cricket as Indian all-rounder
Hanuma Vihari and spinner R Ashwin held the fort resisting an abusive Australia
taking body blows for over forty overs; and the fourth test in Brisbane with
inexperienced youngsters forming nearly half of Team India went down the wire
with India finally scripting a victory to be remembered forever in great world
cricket memory books.
Jasprit Bumrah
For many, the final heroes of the Series would be the Indian
bowlers who bowled with gusto and intelligence from the beginning, never
allowing the hosts cross the 300-run mark except for on three occasions. Most importantly not only in bowling, but playing crucial roles in the batting too which were invariably match-saving or match-winning. And then,
the racial abuse, the body blows and the sledging saga by desperate-to-win
Australia.
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| Mohammad Siraj |
Ravindra Jadeja
It’s really tremendous to repeat the victory of 2018-19 over Australia in Australia. As we said earlier, this augurs well for the future, and perhaps for the first time in the nearly year-old depressive pandemic reign the Indians can actually afford to be all smiles.
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