Published - | Updated - March 4, 2023 08:24 am
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In the Holkar Stadium in Indore, the third Border Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) match saw Team India’s hitters struggle against Australian spinners and lose humiliatingly. The Indian team’s captain, Rohit Sharma, commended Shreyas Iyer’s counterattacking effort in the game’s second innings and said that other batters may have taken a similar batting approach.
Shreyas Iyer, one of India’s best hitters against spinners, hammered 26 runs off 27 deliveries in a flash, including three fours and two sixes. The right-handed batsman went after Australian spinners Matthew Kuhnemann and Nathan Lyon before being dismissed by left-arm pacer Mitchell Starc while executing a flip shot. Then Usman Khawaja pulled a blinder.
At the post-game press conference, Rohit Sharma asserted that Shreyas Iyer had shown the other Indian hitters how to bat in difficult situations. Even though Iyer’s performance was a tad disappointing, Rohit pushed his team members to add more fleeting bat cameos.
“When playing on wickets like this, innings in the vein of Shreyas Iyer are required. To get the bowlers to step up their game, someone needs to take the initiative. According to Rohit, you need to play cameos like that because the batters can’t consistently score 100, 90, or 80 runs.
“If one of the top batsmen can put up a big total, that’s a good thing, that’s terrific, but when you know the pitch has some offering, there is a challenge, you need players to go out there and play the way Iyer did, even though it (his dismissal) was a little unlucky or unfortunate,” the coach said.
After winning the toss, India did not gain anything by batting first under Indian conditions. They had just 109 runs hurried out of them in the first inning. The host team was still able to score 163 runs in the second innings while enabling the visitors to score 88 runs. The Aussies reached their 76 run target in 19 overs, losing just one wicket in the process.