Legendary Indian batter Sunil Gavaskar has criticized the Australian media for trying to create fear among the Indian batters before the first Border-Gavaskar Trophy Test in Perth. He made these statements after India’s dominant 295-run victory at the Optus Stadium in Perth ending the hosts’ dominance at the venue.
Even though the pitch favored pace and bounce throughout the match, the Indian team outperformed the Australians in every aspect of the game. Writing in his column for Sportstar, Sunil Gavaskar said,
“All the boasts about how the pitch is going to be pacy and bouncy and scare the living daylights out of the Indian batters were exactly that — the boasts of a bully. Mind you, it wasn’t the Aussie players but their support staff in the media, both electronic and print, who were trying to be scaremongers.”
“It was very similar to 2007/8 after the kerfuffle between Harbhajan Singh and Andrew Symonds in the Sydney Test match. The Australian selectors had added Shaun Tait to the Aussie squad for the next Test match in Perth, and the media were going nuts, suggesting he was going to blow the Indians away on the fast, bouncy WACA pitch in Perth,” wrote Gavaskar.
“Virender Sehwag had just swatted Brett Lee, Tait, and the others as if he was swatting the famous Perth flies“- Sunil Gavaskar
“What happened? ‘The Wall’ was so solid, but before that, the swashbuckling Virender Sehwag had just swatted Brett Lee, Tait, and the others as if he was swatting the famous Perth flies. He singled out Tait for special attention as if to rubbish the Aussie media claims about the pacers scaring the Indian batters. At the end of the Test match, guess what happened? Tait took an indefinite break from international cricket,” said Gavaskar.
Gavaskar added,
“The Indians had the last laugh by winning the Test match and, if the umpires had not made some forgettable decisions under pressure from the Aussies in the previous Test match in Sydney, then India would have gone to Adelaide for the final Test of that series with the score 1-all.”
Sehwag gave India a rapid start in both innings, scoring 29 and 43, with a total of 13 boundaries. The 72-run victory in the third Test at Perth kept India’s chances alive in the four-match series, after a heartbreaking loss in the controversial Monkeygate Test in Sydney, leaving them 0-2 down.
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