At 152/6, Ajinkya Rahane (89) and Shardul Thakur (51) saved the day for India. When Thakur entered the game, everyone was wondering why he was picked over Ravichandran Ashwin. He played a key inning and got his third fifty-plus score in a row at the Oval.
At the end of Day 3 of the ICC World Test Championship final in 2023, Australia was ahead by 296 runs and still had six wickets to take. This put India in a dangerous position. Rohit Sharma was the team’s captain, and they were out for 296 runs in the first inning.
Notably, he was the third batter to do this after the great Sir Don Bradman and Allan Border. At the end of the day, the all-rounder said that the pitch wasn’t quite ready. He said what he thought based on the fact that the pitch has been giving different bounces since Day 2.
“The pitch is different, for sure. The last time we played, the pitch was doing something, and everyone knows that when there are clouds in England, the ball moves around. Last time, the game became flat as the game went on and the team started taking rollers. But that wasn’t what happened this time. I felt like it wasn’t ready for the game when I got there. “Yesterday and today were a bit up and down, just like we saw,” Thakur was quoted as saying by NDTV.
Shardul Thakur also said, when asked about India’s chances in the game, that cricket is a strange sport and that one good partnership can help take down 450.
“The game of cricket is funny. In an ICC final, it’s impossible to say what the right score is. With just one good team, you can go after 450 or maybe even more. We saw that England chased 400 runs here the year before and didn’t lose too many wickets,” Thakur said.
India is almost certain to lose its second WTC final in a row.
India is looking down the barrel again in a WTC final for the second time in a row. In particular, they had lost by eight runs to New Zealand in the final of the first tournament, which took place in 2021. The top team in the world has a hard time beating Australia, which has a lead of 400 runs.
The Indian team will then try to beat a huge score in the fourth inning to win the prized Test mace on its own. But if the game ends in a tie, both India and Australia will get to share the prized trophy. So, it will be important for the Indian top order to bat well if they want to win the WTC final, which is currently going on.
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