India vs Australia: In an important series that was supposed to determine the fate of the WTC final, the visitors somehow managed to seize control at the end of Day 2 that saw Travis Head pulling off a flurry of impressive strokes. However, come day 3 and India romped over the Australians like a house of cards being flown away by a category 3 tornado.
In a surprising manner, the visitors completely lost plot of today’s game and was being harried and hustled by the Indians with Ravindra Jadeja being the relentless tormentor, prising out turn both ways that left the Australian lower-middle order completely bamboozled as India paved their path for what was heading to be a reckoning win.
Australia lost their last 9 wickets within 119 balls and a paltry 58 runs as Jadeja bagged 7 scalps to finish with his best Test figures while Ashwin claimed the other three to set a target of 115 for India.
The Indian batters had a bit of a tough time early too as KL Rahul was an easy goner but Cheteshwar Pujara once again steadied the ship as he paired well with Rohit Sharma to help India get the start and then Virat stitched an important cameo that saw India travelling half the way with very minimal work to be completed. Despite the fall of Shreyas Iyer a few knots ahead of the finish line, Cheteshwar Pujara ensured that he is getting the job done.
Srikar Bharat stormed a phenomenal knock in the end to help Pujara’s resilient show and in a poetic moment of justice, Cheteshwar Pujara administered the coup de grace as India saw off their opposition convincingly, getting one step closer to the WTC final.
Here are one change that both the sides should be making to their team for the third Test in order to produce better result:
India – Shubman Gill instead of KL Rahul
This is somewhat of a no-brainer as Shubman Gill has been n excellent touch and KL Rahul has simply been a chapter of woes as the LSG skipper has barely got anything going his way. In all the three innings that he has batted in the series so far, he has been downright disappointing. Gill’s exquisite stroke play and his ability to combat spin will do a world of good for the Indians that somehow KL Rahul has not done in the ongoing series.
Australia – Ashton Agar instead of Matthew Kuhnemann
Ideally when it comes to bowling both Agar and Kuhnemann are pretty similar in terms of the styles that they bowl in but the only difference is that Agar provides a bit of a batting reliability, a quality that Australia will so desperately look forward to at the moment after incessant shaky endings. Their batting has been all over the place and the kind of resilience they need in order to add those 40-50 odd runs with the tail, maybe Agar can provide them that.
