Ashish Ranjan
IND vs AUS 3rd Test Day 3: Australia defeated India by nine wickets, concluding the third Test in just over two days to earn a spot in the World Test Championship (WTC) championship match. After losing Usman Khawaja (0) in the very first over, Travis Head (49) and Marnus Labuschagne (28) brought the visitors across the finish line. The hosts were bowled out for 163 in their second innings, leaving Australia with a target of just 76 runs to record a tremendously gratifying victory after losing the first two Border-Gavaskar matches within three days. On the second day of the match at Holkar Stadium, veteran off-spinner Nathan Lyon took eight wickets in the Indian second innings, contributing significantly to Australia’s victory.
This is India’s third home Test defeat in the last ten years. In spite of being dismissed for 109 runs in their first innings, India did well to restrict Australia to 197 runs, conceding an 88-run lead. However, the Indian batters failed to put up a fight during their second innings, as Lyon returned outstanding figures of 8-64. India leads the four-game series 2-1 after victories at Nagpur and New Delhi.
#WTC23 Final bound 🏆
Congratulations Australia. See you in June! 👋 pic.twitter.com/H2YdaWPzYV
— ICC (@ICC) March 3, 2023
IND vs AUS 3rd Test Day 3 Highlights
Nathan Lyon, Player of the Match: It has been a pretty remarkable Test series. But to come out here and put a really good team performance that is something I am really proud about. Today to see the boys get there one down is pretty special. I don’t have all the tricks or all the trades in the game but one thing I do have is belief in my stock ball and that is the biggest thing in world cricket, if you believe in your best ball then you can challenge the best players in the world for longer periods of time.
Rohit Sharma, India captain: When you lose a Test match there are a lot of things which didn’t go our way. Obviously we didn’t bat well in the first innings and we understand how important it is to put runs on the board. Once they got a 80-90 run lead, we had to produce another innings with the bat and we were not able to do that. If we had batted well in the first innings then things would have been different. We haven’t thought about the Ahmedabad Test, we just finished the Test and we have some time to think about it. We need to understand no matter what the pitches are we have to come out and do the job. When you are playing on challenging pitches you have to be brave. I felt we allowed their bowlers to bowl to one particular spot, not taking any credit away especialy Lyon, but when a bowler is doing that you have to come up with different plans. One odd game can happen like that and this game was all about that. We want few guys stand up and put their hand up to take the team through. You will falter in your plans and that’s what happened in this game.
The WTC Final scenarios
A victory in Ahmedabad is sufficient for India to qualify. While a loss or even a tie would take their fate out of their control and require them to rely on New Zealand’s performance to qualify. Sri Lanka is the only other team capable of displacing India in the WTC final. If India loses or draws the Ahmedabad Test, New Zealand must win or draw at least one of the remaining two matches against Sri Lanka.
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