Rishabh Pant

It was a rare of the rarest moments in the history of Test Cricket with a Test match going down the wire till the last mandatory overs and converting itself into a T20-like situation as India needed around 50-odd runs from the last 10 overs and Australia needed to capture 5 wickets. That too, in the fifth and final day of the match with India batting last facing a daunting target 328 runs for victory or to suffer defeat or to save the match and the Series. This was also like a classic tennis game with match points and Series points over a breathtaking and suspenseful period of time.

 

And, who could be a better player than Rishabh Pant in that T20 moments? Conclusively for the team, Pant blossomed into tremendous form from the third Test in Sydney and started doing what he had been expected to do since a long while, irrespective of the formats of the game concerned. With more successful players in the shortest formats, Washington Sundar and Shardul Thakur giving him company! Pant did it in his unique style and aggression hitting a four to wrest victory from an increasingly desperate Australian side, with just two overs more to go. This is a victory that would make the pioneers of the IPL really proud, at long last.

 

Washington Sundar

Yes, India has accomplished a task considered by many to be almost impossible, particularly after that 36-all-out syndrome in the first Test in Sydney, and lifted the Border-Gavaskar Trophy beating the hosts 2-1 in the four-Test Series with this incredible historic victory in Brisbane, the last Australian fortress to be conquered, by 3 wickets. We cannot afford to overlook the fact that the ultimate heroes of this victory are indeed the duo of Washington Sundar-Shardul Thakur for their historic 123-run partnership in the Indian first innings that brought India back into the game. This was Sundar’s test debut and Thakur played just one test before this. Then, there are the other youngsters: Mohammad Siraj, Subhman Gill, debutant Natarajan and Navdeep Saini who held their nerves and performed heroically overcoming their supposed inexperience.

 

This point brings us to another fact that Team India fielded for the Brisbane Test was without their striking bowlers, Jasprit Bumrah, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Mohammad Shami and Umesh Yadav who were all in the injured list, not to speak of the on-leave regular captain Virat Kohli. This all-important fact augurs really well for the future of Indian Cricket, because now there are young, eager, fit, aggressive and competitively capable cricketers who can be called for field duty anytime needed and with confidence. On the batting youngsters, Gill really shone (91 in this match) showing great promise for the future; and of course, Mayank Agarwal and Prithvi Shaw still need to go miles before hopefully cementing their places in the team. However, all of them are superb cricketers making the reserves of Team India really an energetically vibrant place.

 

R Ashwin

The whole of the Test Series between India and Australia had been an exciting, intensely-fought and absorbing affair. But for the ‘36’ incident the first test in Adelaide could have gone India’s way too; led and batted brilliantly by the stand-in Captain Ajinkya Rahane the Melbourne test was won by India making the Series level, and this team-performance was just astounding as many considered the team was gone and out after that catastrophic 36; the third test in Sydney was marked by one of the most memorable fightbacks in world test cricket as Indian all-rounder Hanuma Vihari and spinner R Ashwin held the fort resisting an abusive Australia taking body blows for over forty overs; and the fourth test in Brisbane with inexperienced youngsters forming nearly half of Team India went down the wire with India finally scripting a victory to be remembered forever in great world cricket memory books. 

Jasprit Bumrah

For many, the final heroes of the Series would be the Indian bowlers who bowled with gusto and intelligence from the beginning, never allowing the hosts cross the 300-run mark except for on three occasions. Most importantly not only in bowling, but playing crucial roles in the batting too which were invariably match-saving or match-winning. And then, the racial abuse, the body blows and the sledging saga by desperate-to-win Australia.

Mohammad Siraj

 

Ravindra Jadeja

We must mention the leadership of the Indian stand-in captain Ajinkya Rahane, even though he could not do much in batting in both the third and the fourth tests. He continued to inspire the teammates by putting faith in all the members, and by making strategic moves throughout. He has also been the only centurion from India, with Steve Smith and Labuschagne scoring the other two centuries in the Series. We can realistically suggest India cricket management start adopting the split-captaincy experiment, making Rahane the permanent skipper in Test matches.

 

It’s really tremendous to repeat the victory of 2018-19 over Australia in Australia. As we said earlier, this augurs well for the future, and perhaps for the first time in the nearly year-old depressive pandemic reign the Indians can actually afford to be all smiles.