New Delhi: Citing the historic 376-run partnership for the fifth wicket between VVS Laxman (281) and Rahul Dravid (180) during the Kolkata Test against Australia, former India opener Gautam Gambhir warned the Rohit Sharma-led team You don’t need to be soft, because Australia has suffered such setbacks before.
India have won the first two matches of the ongoing Border-Gavaskar Trophy and retained the trophy 2-0 in the four-match series with a six-wicket win in New Delhi. Two more matches are yet to be played in the series, which will be held in Indore and Ahmedabad respectively. Another win will see India reach the final of the World Test Championship (WTC) for the second time in a row, which will be held at The Oval in London from June 7. Gambhir said, ‘If either Rahul Dravid or VVS Laxman had to score a double century, you will remember that they did it when India were on the verge of defeat. One player scored 280 (281) and the other scored 150 (180) on the follow-on and India won the series. Such things have happened. So you can’t count them but technically, there were a lot of issues.
Gambhir said it was too early to predict whether India can win the series 4-0 and pointed out that Australia’s star batsmen have struggled in both the matches. They need to improve as a team to make a comeback in the series. He further said, ‘I cannot predict that it will be 4-0, because Steve Smith, Labushen, Usman Khawaja are present in that team. At the same time, if David Warner does not play, the responsibility of the team will be on these three batsmen. 17 sixes and 161 runs… Indian storm wreaks havoc in T20, Preity Zinta’s player’s rain shook the stadium!Aakash Chopra: 19 innings, 9 single digit scores… Such is the international cricket career of Akash ChopraWilfred Rhodes: Muralitharan’s Guru too… The greatest era of batsmen, took not one or two but more than four thousand wickets