India’s captain and leading pace bowler, Jasprit Bumrah, tried out a new form of aggression towards the end of the first day of the final test in Sydney as he had a verbal duel with Sam Konstas. The latter had
conveniently kept throwing a few words to put Bumrah off his game but the Indian captain stood his own and served the term out with the wicket of Usman Khawaja to round up the day’s play on a decent note for the Indian team.
The former Indian cricketer, Sanjay Manjrekar was happy to see the team fired up and raring to go despite the pathetic performances.
“Yeah, they are all fired up, and it’s good to see such passion, at least toward the end of a long series,” he added. I mean, Bumrah has been phenomenal, and “great” doesn’t do justice to his performance as a bowler for me in this way. To see him fired up in such a fashion is kind of rare,” he said about the day’s play on Star Sports.
“Sam Konstas-there’s something about him that goes under the skin of the Indian players. You saw Virat Kohli in the background as well, really fired up. If Bumrah’s like this, you know it’s something special,” he added. Commenting further on Star Sports.
The former Australian cricketer, Simon Kaitch had earlier praised Scott Boland’s performance in the first innings when he was the pick of the Aussie bowlers, taking four wickets and believes that Australia have the luxury of having such a pacer coming in place of Josh Hazlewood.
“He holds a distinguished position among the fans not just at the MCG for as he’s a local legend. He got an enormous reception here today in Sydney. His average here down under, I think, is marginally over 13.5-and that’s amazing. What he does well, as we’ve talked through the series, is take wickets in bunches because he puts the ball into very dangerous areas at the start of a batsman’s innings,” said Kaitich while praising Boland.
“That’s what makes it least surprising for him to have so many first-ball dismissals. Today, Kohli almost managed one on the first ball, and Reddy was out first ball because Boland puts questions at the top end of the off-stump with a little movement both ways. Relentless and absolutely indulgent for this side, taking into account that Josh Hazlewood is too,” he concluded.
