- Friday, February 28, 2025
India fell like ninepins once the Virat Kohli-Ajinkya Rahane partnership, which was looking strong on Day 4 evening, was broken by pacer Scott Boland.
By: Shubham Ghosh
INDIA’S FAILURE to win an International Cricket Council (ICC) trophy after 2013 continued as the Asian side, ranked No.1 in Tests, lost to Australia in the final of the World Test Championship (WTC) 2023 by 209 runs on Sunday (11).
Resuming from their overnight score of 164 for 3, India were hopeful that two of their top batters, Virat Kohli (49) and Ajinkya Rahane (46) would continue with their gritty show but once Kohli fell against pacer Scott Boland and his 86-run partnership with Rahane came to an end, India fell like ninepins and were all out for 234 in the very first session of the day.
Both Ravindra Jadeja and Shardul Thakur, who showed some resistance in the first innings and put up key partnerships with Rahane, failed for no score in the second innings.
Spinner Nathan Lyon picked four wickets for 41 runs to be Australia’s most successful bowler in the second innings while pacer Boland took three wickets. Captain Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc shared the remaining three wickets between them.
India went to the backfoot on the very first day despite reducing Australia to 76 for 3 after captain Rohit Sharma won the toss and deciding to bowl. Centuries from Travis Head and Steve Smith saw the Kangaroos snatching the initiative from India who then played a catching-up game for the remaining part of the match. Head was picked as the player of the match.
While it was the second successive defeat for India in the final of the World Test Championship after the eight-wicket loss to New Zealand in 2021, Australia became the first team in the world to win all ICC tournaments — five 50-over world cups, one T20 world cup, two Champions Trophy — after winning the Test championship final.
Scores in brief: Australia 469 & 270/8 declared beat India 296 & 234 by 209 runs.
