Rohit Sharma: “When you lose a Test match, there’s a lot of things that didn’t go our way. To start with, we didn’t bat well in the first innings. We understand how important it is to put runs on the board in the first innings. And obviously, when they got an 80-90 run lead, we needed to put in a big performance with the bat but we couldn’t do that, taking just a 75-run lead. Honestly, we haven’t thought about it yet. We just finished this Test now so we need to regroup and try.
We need to understand that we need to improve as a team. When you are playing on challenging pitches you have to bowl. We allowed their bowlers to bowl in one spot. Not to take any credit away from their bowlers, Nathan Lyon especially. We had to try and be brave, which I think we were not. We can take a lot of credit as well, for how we batted in the first two games. One odd game can happen where things don’t come together, but even then you need players to come together and chip in. We wanted a few guys to stand up but it didn’t happen. We were slightly behind and we did not apply ourselves the way we would have liked to.
Steve Smith: “I think obviously that first day, losing the toss and having to bowl first. But our bowlers did really well, specially Kuhnemann. All our bowlers contributed. With the bat, Usman was really good in the first innings. We had some good partnerships. India bowled really well in the back end, we had a bit of a collapse. We had to toil hard yesterday, Pujji played a good knock, but all our bowlers did really well. It was a complete performance in the end.
We are thinking of Patty back home, our thoughts are with him. But I really enjoyed this week. I like captaining in this part of the world. I think I understand a lot of the intricacies. It’s a place where I really enjoy and I think I did a reasonable job this week. The approach will be much the same. We have to see how the conditions are like. It’s good to be in the WTC final but it’s just about playing good cricket. Hopefully, we can finish the series well.”
Nathan Lyon is the player of the match: “It’s been a pretty remarkable series. But to come out here and put out a good team performance it was pretty special. I don’t have all the skills and all the tricks in the trade but the one thing I have is the belief in my stock ball. And I think if you have that, you can get success. I don’t think I’ve mastered it. I’ve been lucky enough to challenge against some of the best players to play the game, the likes of Virat and Pujji and the rest of the guys. I just like challenging myself.”
India vs Australia Highlights today. 3rd Test, Holkar Cricket Stadium, Indore, Friday 3-3-2023, Australia tour of India 2023.
Heads says Steven Smith, tails it is. India will bat first.
India team: Gill, Rohit (c), Pujara, Kohli, Iyer, Jadeja, Bharat (wk), Ashwin, Axar, Umesh, Siraj
Australia team: Khawaja, Head, Labuschagne, Smith, Handscomb, Green, Carey (wk), Starc, Lyon, Murphy, Kuhnemann
Head to Head In Test’s: 104
India Won: 32
Australia Won: 43
India Test Rankings: 2nd
Australia Test Rankings: 1st
Form guide
(Last five completed matches, most recent first)
India WWWWL
Australia LLDWW
Match Timings: 4:00 AM GMT | 9:30 PM Local
Umpires – Joel Wilson, Nitin Menon
TV Umpire – Richard Kettleborough
Match Referee – Chris Broad
Reserve Umpire – Virender Sharma
Match number – Test no. 2496
