Team is nine wickets down, nowhere near a chance of eking out a win, the famed batting line-up collapsed like a pack of cards but the dressing room celebrated like India just won a World Cup. That’s what doggedness makes you do and feel. The fightback, the resolve to stand in the middle and counter the difficult situations and come out of them. This is what the teamwork and team game means. The joy with which Virat Kohli jumped, or how the coach Gautam Gambhir sitting in his chair let out a couple of roars in the dressing room was indication of how much this meant to the team.
Now India having avoided the follow-on, go into the final day of the ongoing Gabba Test with Akash Deep and Jasprit Bumrah set, with one wicket remaining and their tails up against an Australia with tired Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc and no Josh Hazlewood. It rained throughout in patches on Days 3 and 4 but the latter proved to be the moving day given the Test match was already moving towards a draw but needed a solid fightback from the visitors with bat.
The top-order or rather the high-profile names flopped yet again before the likes of KL Rahul, Ravindra Jadeja playing his first match of the series, Bumrah and Akash Deep also in his first appearance in the ongoing Border-Gavaskar Trophy put their hand up and put a price tag on their wickets.
Skipper Rohit Sharma, who has almost become a walking wicket, averaging 12.22 in his last nine innings, was dismissed for just 10 by his opposite number Cummins.
The day actually started with Steve Smith dropping KL Rahul in the second slip. It was probably an indication of how the day was going to pan out. Smith did get his redemption arc as he dismissed KL Rahul by grabbing a screamer in the slips but by then Rahul had added 51 more runs to his overnight score. Time was of the essence for Australia and Rahul’s grit ensured that a lot of it had passed before he got out.
Rahul missed out on a well-deserved century as he was distraught after getting out but he left the team in a better place as by then Ravindra Jadeja was set. Jadeja took India’s innings forward and took the score beyond 200.
Jadeja fell into Pat Cummins’ trap when he was running out of partners and had to farm the strike. Jadeja’s 77 got India close to getting rid of the follow-on but not quite.
Akash Deep and Jasprit Bumrah then had to put their head down as India still needed 33 runs to avoid follow-on. Since both can hold the bat, unlike Mohammed Siraj, both had belief in each other to be able to leave the strike in their hands. They broke the target down in sets of 5-6 runs and eventually overhauled.
Akash Deep who went unbeaten on 27 was itching to play the relief shot, smashed Pat Cummins into the second tier, the moment India avoided the follow-on. India are still 193 runs behind but the forecast isn’t great for Day 5 either and draw is the most likely possibility.
