‘These players, who had just eleven or thirteen wickets’: Sunil Gavaskar has high praise for young Indian bowlers
Virat Kohli, R Ashwin, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma, Ravindra Jadeja, Hanuma Vihari, KL Rahul, Umesh Yadav, Bhuvneshwar Kumar have all missed part of the Test series or the whole contest itself.
Team India have re. The five bowlers India regularly select in their playing XI are all injured. Their talismanic captain is also missing. Two batsmen who were likely to play a big part in the series have also been injured. But still, the Indian cricket team have managed to stay in the four-match Test series against a full-strengthened Australia side. They are just not fighting on but also fighting back.
Virat Kohli, R Ashwin, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma, Ravindra Jadeja, Hanuma Vihari, KL Rahul, Umesh Yadav, Bhuvneshwar Kumar have all missed part of the Test series or the whole contest itself.
Washington Sundar, Shubman Gill, Navdeep Saini, Mohammed Siraj, and T Natarajan have made their debuts in this series while Shardul Thakur (1 Test) has also started for India in Brisbane. The situation is such that an opening batsman (Mayank Agarwal) is playing in the middle-order. But still, India have a chance to win the series. As soon as you count them out, Team India fightback.
Former India captain Sunil Gavaskar has also lauded the team and the performance put in by the inexperienced bowling attack. Even though they are playing against the likes of Steve Smith and David Warner, India managed to restrict Australia to just 369 runs in ‘Fortress Gabba’ despite another injury to pacer Saini.
“Our young bowlers gave a very good performance. Yes, there was a partnership between Paine and Green. Our bowlers had got off to a slightly slow start today; Natarajan was hit for two fours in his first over," Gavaskar said during a discussion on the Sony Sports Network.
"But after that, the way they bowled, it was praiseworthy, and I enjoyed seeing that. These players, who had just the eleven or thirteen wickets before the game started, bowled very well; it seemed like Australia will score 400-450 runs at one point," he added.
After being reduced to 186/6, Shardul and Washington have managed to stitch together a 50+ partnership to take India past 250.