India suffered a heart-wrenching defeat against Australia on Day 5. Australia asserted its dominance and shattered India’s hope to win an ICC Title. The Final day began with an optimistic outlook, as Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane were solid on the crease, and at some stage, it seemed possible that India might chase down the mammoth score of 444, as the Asian Giants had already made 164/3 on day 4.
However, the aspirations were soon crumbled as Scott Boland gave an early breakthrough to dismiss Virat Kohli and Ravindra Jadeja in the same over. Kohli was caught on a slip by Smith once again, while Jadeja caught behind for a duck. Rahane also could not endure for long as he was removed by Mitchell Starc for 46. Thakur who played exceptionally well in the 1st innings, failed to open his account this time. The wickets kept tumbling and it was Nathan Lyon, who inflicted the final blow to seal the match by 209 runs to win the World Test Championship finals.
Failure of Virat Kohli
Once again, the Men in Blue fell like a pack of cards when Virat Kohli was undone by the sheer brilliance of pacer Scott Boland and a spectacular catch was taken by Steve Smith. The billion people would be shell-shocked as the team still is too much centric on Virat Kohli.
Australia’s bowlers bowled through a plan and teased Virat Kohli by bowling off-stump channel and once again he fell into the trap. Scott Boland was over the moon as every rising pacer dreams of picking the wicket of the star batter Virat Kohli.
Huge defeat for India
India now has lost 2 back to back WTC final as earlier in 2019-21, the mighty New Zealand had outplayed India quite one-sided. There are some reports emerging that the captaincy would be snatched away from Rohit Sharma after his disappointing performance with bat & at the same time, his captaincy wasn’t upto the mark.
India needs to give chances to the youngsters like Sarfaraz Khan & Yashasvi Jaiswal and try to build a team which would win ICC World Test Championship rather than winning bilateral Test Series against big teams like England & Australia.
Also Read: ICC World Test Championship Final: “It Will Be A Battle Of Equals”- Virat Kohli