He struggled in white-ball cricket and was moved from opener to No. 7 in the early rounds of the Ranji Trophy last season. Then he turned it around and went on to average 74.18

Sruthi Ravindranath11-Sep-2024N Jagadeesan was pretty sure he was getting phased out of the Tamil Nadu team last season. He was only 28 and was one of the side’s senior players, with eight years of domestic experience. He had broken records at the Vijay Hazare Trophy in the 2022-23 season. But he played only two games in the 2023-24 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy and had an average return in the Vijay Hazare Trophy that followed. He was also pushed down to No. 7 from his regular opening position in the first match of the Ranji Trophy. Then, when he got a chance to move up to his preferred opening slot in his hometown Coimbatore, he wanted to make it count. He went on to enjoy his best season, racking up 816 runs in nine games at an average of 74.18, and went on to make the India B side for the ongoing Duleep Trophy.Among the feats he achieved in the Ranji Trophy last season was also facing 400-plus balls in an innings in two consecutive games: he scored 245 not out against Railways and followed it up with 321 against Chandigarh.”I was coming out of a place where I wasn’t considered to be part of the team,” Jagadeesan tells ESPNcricinfo. “In the second game [against Tripura] I didn’t get to bat and the first game [against Gujarat] I didn’t score a lot of runs, I was batting lower down the order too. The moment I went opening, I told myself there’s no way I’m going to let my wicket go.”There was a very much a driving factor after I got settled which kept telling me that ‘you’ve struggled a lot and people have been talking about dropping you, you are not going to be in that situation ever again’. The moment I got settled in, there was another driving factor. I was settled and I was not letting it go. It’s a different high when you know that you actually faced 400 balls because it involves a lot of stamina. My focus levels were really, really high too. I genuinely felt that I didn’t have the patience to play 400 balls. It was the grit.”While Jagadeesan finished the season on a high, TN’s campaign ended on a sour note. After their semi-final loss against Mumbai, Sulakshan Kulkarni, who was the coach of TN at the time, publicly criticised captain R Sai Kishore’s decision to bat first.It was the culmination of a season in which relations between the coach and the players were not smooth and, in that tricky situation, the TN players got a lot closer, Jagadeesan says, praising Sai Kishore’s leadership.During the downtime post the domestic season, Jagadeesan captained the TN Colts team on their UK tour in May for three weeks under coach L Balaji. That aside, he also dabbled in TV commentary during IPL 2024 and the men’s T20 World Cup, which he says was an “eye-opening” experience.”When you’re at the comm box, you have to pay a lot of attention,” he says. “You have to focus on the game and predict…only then you will be able to speak well. I realised even when I’m not playing the game, I knew what the bowlers were going to do by just watching. It was very insightful.”For example, when you’re in the comm box you actually predict what a fast bowler is going to do looking at the field set. You get deeper connections with the bowlers. That helps you while you bat against them as well, because you’ve actually seen what the bowler is going to do. If the thing I predict happens then I can say I’ve learned something out of it. There’s a lot you can learn when you commentate.”Jagadeesan is hoping to harness all of these experiences, and has also set clear goals – which he usually doesn’t do – heading into this domestic season.”The ultimate aim for me is to be part of the Indian cricket team,” he says. “I don’t usually set goals coming into a domestic season, but I think it’s high time I start doing that. In Ranji Trophy where I did not even think I could face 400 balls, I did that. These were the things which I did not even think was possible. Just like how my long-term goal is to play for India, there’s always been a goal for me in my head since childhood which is to cross the 1000-run mark in Ranji Trophy. That’s always been on my checklist.”

There are few top-tail left-arm bowlers like him, who have the chops in the powerplay as well as at the death

Deivarayan Muthu24-Jan-20251:37

What makes Arshdeep stand out?

An India fast bowler has been dominating T20Is over the past three years, and his name is not Jasprit Bumrah. On Wednesday, he became India’s highest wicket-taker in T20Is, leapfrogging Yuzvendra Chahal, after besting England’s top order in Kolkata. He’s now on the verge of becoming the fastest quick bowler to 100 T20I wickets. If he gets there on Saturday in Chennai, he will become the third-fastest overall to the landmark after Rashid Khan and Sandeep Lamichhane.Since making his T20I debut in July 2022, Arshdeep Singh has grown into an all-round, all-purpose bowler: he gets the new ball to hoop around; if it doesn’t swing, he keeps it tight; and then brings excellent defensive skills in the end overs. Besides nailing the yorker, from both over and around the wicket, he has a deceptive bouncer in his repertoire. It’s not for nothing that Arshdeep is the leading wicket-taker in the powerplay (42) and death (46) – the toughest phases in the format – in T20Is since his debut.Even England’s Bazballers couldn’t prevent him from bossing both those phases in the T20I series opener at Eden Gardens. Phil Salt is among the fastest-scoring batters in the powerplay, but Arshdeep left him scoreless with a back-of-a-length delivery that seamed and burst off the deck, drawing a leading edge to the keeper.Related

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In his next over, a game of cat-and-mouse ensued between Arshdeep and Ben Duckett. The England batter had originally shaped to scoop Arshdeep over short fine and upon spotting it, Arshdeep shifted his lines much wider of off and pitched it very full. Duckett adjusted well and ended up reverse-scooping Arshdeep over short third for four. Arshdeep shifted his line back to the stumps and subtly dragged his length back to also have Duckett skying a leading edge next ball. Even Jos Buttler and Harry Brook couldn’t get him away in an outstanding opening spell of 3-0-10-2. Arshdeep then returned for the 19th over, closing out his shift with nifty slower variations and yorkers.These variations and his mastery over them make Arshdeep a special bowler. After Zaheer Khan and Ashish Nehra had retired, India’s selectors had cast their nets far and wide to find the next left-arm seamer. While they trialled Jaydev Unadkat, Barinder Sran, S Aravind, Khaleel Ahmed and T Natarajan in the role over the years, nobody had Arshdeep’s range.”If you remember, Arshdeep came into the spotlight in the IPL by bowling the tough overs for Punjab Kings,” Sanjay Manjrekar said on ESPNcricinfo’s Time:Out show. “He bowled the death overs also very well and then started playing for India. I think it was in England that we saw him swing the ball for the first time, with the new ball. So that was like an added feature to Arshdeep, who looked like an all-purpose T20 bowler but somebody who could swing the ball… But [in the first T20I], you saw more seam [movement] off the pitch; so there was some smartness there.ESPNcricinfo Ltd”He realised that there was enough in the pitch to bowl shorter and not try and get the ball full. He made life really difficult for the opening batters. He’s somebody who has got swing, seam, he can bowl the bouncer and has got the yorker as well. India are fortunate to see Arshdeep finding his stride here.”Even in T20 cricket globally, there are very few top-tail left-arm bowlers like Arshdeep. Trent Boult is the OG new-ball ace, he doesn’t quite have the defensive skills at the death. Marco Jansen can also get the new ball to hoop around, but he, too, tends to leak runs in the end overs. Moreover, Jansen has often cracked under pressure and has struggled to find a way back.Arshdeep, like every other bowler, has copped punishment at the death, but he is so unflappable that he finds a way back. In the first T20I against New Zealand in Ranchi two years ago, Arshdeep had conceded 7(nb), 6,6,4 in the last over and it cost India a fair bit. In the second T20I in Lucknow at the death, he responded with 2-0-7-2.In December 2023, at a much smaller ground against Australia, the Chinnaswamy Stadium, Arshdeep gave up 37 in his first three overs, but he nervelessly defended nine off the final over to go from “culprit” to hero.Arshdeep Singh produced a double-strike with the new ball at Eden Gardens•BCCIEarlier in 2022, after having dropped a catch against Pakistan in an Asia Cup thriller in Dubai, he was met with the vilest abuse on social media. In his next game against Pakistan in the 2022 T20 World Cup at the MCG, though, he swung out Babar Azam and bounced out Mohammad Rizwan in the powerplay. He fronted up to bowl the difficult overs in the injury-enforced absence of Bumrah at the time.In the next T20 World Cup, which India won, Arshdeep came away as the joint-highest wicket-taker with 17 strikes at an economy rate of 6.31. Who can forget his defensive masterclass in the four-run penultimate over against David Miller and Keshav Maharaj in the famous final in Barbados?Arshdeep’s adaptability and bouncebackability then had seven of the ten teams bidding for him at the IPL 2025 auction last December. India’s team management now believes that those skills can be valuable in ODIs as well in the upcoming Champions Trophy.In T20Is, at 25, he has already established himself as one of the best in the world and his race to 100 wickets can only embellish his status even further.

Kohli coming in with more than 200 runs still required and 45 overs to go in an ODI? You know how this goes, don’t you?

Sidharth Monga23-Feb-20252:14

Kumble: Kohli’s mind was at ease today

It was never in doubt. Even he himself seemed to say that. This didn’t need a professional lip-reader.”I told you. Relax,” Virat Kohli said to the change room as he finished the game against Pakistan off with a four that also brought up his 51st ODI century.He might have been saying that to those who had been concerned if he would get the hundred, or to those who had been concerned about the overall chase, seeing how India got into trouble on a slow pitch after the first wicket against Bangladesh. And three times against Sri Lanka on similar slow tracks last year.Related

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This was a better batting pitch, and Pakistan had only one threatening spinner. In such a scenario, Kohli coming in with more than 200 runs still required and 45 overs to go, neither the win nor the century could be in much doubt. Not even when he was running out of runs to score to get to the landmark. We have seen that in the last ODI World Cup – he can catch up.We say that. But batting is an activity where you fail way more often than you succeed. Let’s say success is scoring at least 30 runs in a win. Even a great such as Kohli has done that only 115 times out of 299, and that’s a freakish rate.And, at 36, in an era of such little ODI cricket and ball dominating in Tests, success can feel elusive even though he has played just six innings between the great World Cup he had and this hundred. To the extent that Kohli can “feel a bit down”, and eventually surrender himself to the gods, cricketing or otherwise.”I think one of the keynotes there is I kept telling myself in the field – whenever I was feeling a bit down – that I’m going to put my 100% on every ball that I field,” Kohli told the official broadcast. “And at some time, I will get the rewards for the hard work that I’m putting in on the ground. That’s why I take a lot of pride in working hard, and running around the field as well. And yeah, when you put your head down and you work hard enough, then I think god rewards you accordingly. So I’m very grateful and thankful to god.”

“What kind of hard work he must have put in? The whole world is saying he is out of form, but he comes to a big match the whole world waits for, and scores runs effortlessly, wins the match, becomes the Man of the Match”Mohammad Rizwan on Virat Kohli

Once Kohli lets his instinctive game take over, though, these chases can look like cakewalks. Under five an over to get, only one spinner to negate, the ball coming on to the bat, Kohli can make a high-pressure game look mundane. That is a quality that should never be understated. He faced 30 balls from Abrar Ahmed, attempted only one boundary, and took just 16 runs off him. Not to mention he has been out to wristspinners in the last five innings he has faced them in, for just 21 runs.”My job was pretty clear: to control the middle overs, to try and go after the seam bowlers, and not take too many risks against the spinners, but keep rotating strike,” Kohli said. “And once we strung in a nice partnership, then towards the end, Shreyas [Iyer] accelerated and I got a few boundaries away as well. It was more or less the way I play ODI cricket, so I was happy with the template.”Virat Kohli is all smiles after India’s comprehensive win•Alex Davidson/Getty ImagesThis is something it seems Kohli can do with one arm tied behind his back, but this was an India-Pakistan match and he is a human after all. “For me, it’s just about keeping the outside noise and the distractions away,” Kohli said. “I try to stay in my space as much as possible, really take care of how my energy levels are, what am I thinking, my thoughts, because it’s very easy for me to kind of get pulled into the expectations and the frenzy around games like these.”After the game, in which Kohli also knocked off two more records, one in the field and one with the bat, even the opposition acknowledged the hard work that goes into making it look this effortless.”I am in awe of his hard work,” the Pakistan captain Mohammad Rizwan said. “What kind of hard work he must have put in? The whole world is saying he is out of form, but he comes to a big match the whole world waits for, and scores runs effortlessly, wins the match, becomes the Man of the Match. I will praise his hard work and his fitness levels. We tried our best to get him out, but he got the better of us. It means he has put in the hard work behind the scenes.”Now Kohli will put his feet up for two days because “at 36, a week’s break [between this and India’s next game] is good”.

He is finally reaping the rewards for his consistency and fitness but can he sustain this intensity for longer formats for India?

Sidharth Monga10-Apr-20251:36

What’s working for Prasidh Krishna this season?

Gujarat Titans (GT) have shown themselves to be a pretty ruthless and unemotional side.Washington Sundar finally got a chance to play – the Impact Player rule has ruined it for even slightly imperfect allrounders – in the last match, put in a match-winning innings that had commentators and experts calling him too good to be left out, but when GT returned to a red-soil pitch at home, they left him out. They didn’t get carried away. They trusted M Shahrukh Khan, a specialist batter, to do the job. They also saw the conditions called for an extra fast bowler. They didn’t try to accommodate Washington.R Sai Kishore was GT’s second-highest wicket-taker before this match. “Probably the best spinner in the tournament so far,” according to their mentor Parthiv Patel. He didn’t get to bowl until this match against Rajasthan Royals (RR) was practically over as a contest.Related

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This is a squad that has lost Kagiso Rabada after three games, and yet they seem to be able to field different attacks for different conditions almost effortlessly. They go to Bengaluru where new-ball movement can be crucial, they add Arshad Khan. They see the one sluggish track in Hyderabad being used, and they bring in Washington. They roll out the slow and low black-soil pitch at home, they go for taller bowlers. On red soil, back comes Arshad. And Shubman Gill almost always has six nearly genuine bowlers at his disposal.However, apart from the resurgent Mohammed Siraj and the all-time-great Rashid Khan, there has been one constant in the GT side that has made this versatility and ruthlessness possible. He is tall, finally fit and quick, he goes by Skiddy on Instagram and with his team-mates, but he is anything but. This version of Prasidh Krishna is the one that India hoped for when they backed him.

The reaction Prasidh is getting from the pitch is a sight for sore eyes. The bounce is steep and unbecoming of the lengths he is bowling, drawing poor connections from the batters

Without taking anything away from Siraj, he does get the new ball to play with. Prasidh is playing the other role of making something out of nothing when the movement has died, and you need some other point of difference. He has now had four straight matches in which he has gone under seven an over. He has taken wickets in each of these games.Nothing quite sums up Prasidh’s impact more than GT’s last two home games. Against Mumbai Indians (MI), they played on the black-soil pitch because MI are used to the red soil at Wankhede and are built for quick and bouncy surfaces. His figures: 4-0-18-2. Against RR, GT went back to the pace and bounce of red soil. His figures: 4-0-24-3.A lot of top-level cricket is about feeling good about your body and executing your plans well, but don’t underestimate the value of knowing what to do in different conditions. In these two games, Prasidh has shown the awareness of his own game that only comes with experience. On the slower, grippier surface, Prasidh went into the surface more and bowled more slower balls. Both his wickets in that match came off slower balls. Every fourth ball he delivered in that game was a slower one.Prasidh Krishna enjoyed a productive outing against his old team, Rajasthan Royals•IPLOn the quicker pitch, not only did Prasidh crank up the pace, he also didn’t bother with the slower balls. He tried just one against RR as against seven against MI. Six balls went above 145kph and 14 above 140kph against RR, as against just one and eight against MI. Against MI, he went short of a good length 15 times, against RR only 12.Reaping the rewards for his consistency and fitness, Prasidh has probably been the best fast bowler outside the powerplay in this IPL so far. Even if it is over a period of four overs, the reaction Prasidh is getting from the pitch is a sight for sore eyes. The bounce is steep and unbecoming of the lengths he is bowling, drawing poor connections from the batters. The pace is up perhaps because he feels good about his physical fitness.Too often, India have been edged out of Test matches because their bowlers are shorter and skiddier, thus extracting less from the surfaces in South Africa, New Zealand, England and Australia. India’s next big Test tour is in England, two months away. Can Prasidh sustain this consistency and intensity for longer formats?

Throw in his bowling, and there’s a strong case to be made that he was the Champions Trophy’s MVP

Karthik Krishnaswamy11-Mar-2025

Axar Patel is all smiles ahead of the final•ICC via Getty Images

It was a moment of resounding clarity, the kind of moment that tells you everything about a cricketer.Axar Patel was facing his first ball since Shreyas Iyer, with whom he had put on 61 for the fourth wicket, had been dismissed. It was the second ball since that dismissal, and the last ball of that over. India needed 68 off 67 balls to win the Champions Trophy.It was the kind of situation where other batters may have looked to play out that ball and give the match situation a chance to settle. Not Axar.Related

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Mitchell Santner floated the ball up into his arc, and this may perhaps have been deliberate, a challenge, with deep backward square leg, a squarish deep midwicket and long-on back on the leg-side boundary. “I know you like that slog-sweep,” Santner seemed to tell Axar. “Let’s see if you try one now, in this situation.”Axar took it on, and nailed it, clearing the leaping deep midwicket fielder to his left.It was a moment that took you back to last year’s T20 World Cup final, when Axar walked in at 34 for 3 and hit four sixes – two via the slog-sweep – in a 31-ball 47 that kick-started India’s recovery. It was exactly the sort of clinical counterattack India needed at that stage. They couldn’t afford to lose wickets to low-percentage shots, but they couldn’t risk coming to a standstill, and in Axar they had just the right man for the job, a batter with the ability to handle himself against both pace and spin, a small but deadly set of go-to shots, and the conviction to take on those shots given half a chance.The six off Santner came from the same conviction. This was a match-up Axar backed himself to dominate, left-hand batter against left-arm fingerspinner, and the ball was in his arc. How did it matter that India had just lost a wicket?There’s always a measure of risk when you try to hit sixes, of course, and Axar knows this; his first innings in this Champions Trophy, against Bangladesh, had ended on 8 when he miscued a slog-sweep off the legspinner Rishad Hossain.Axar Patel complemented his exploits at No. 5 with tidy overs with the ball•AFP/Getty ImagesThere’s no way, however, that India’s team management would have minded him trying that shot. They’ve turned him into a regular No. 5 precisely for being willing to take on those risks, and having the judgement and skill to pull them off more often than not.”The clear message was given to him when we started the ODI series against England [before the Champions Trophy], that no matter what the situation is, you will bat at five,” Rohit Sharma said ahead of the semi-final against Australia. “And the kind of improvement he’s shown with his bat over the last year or so is superb to watch. And that is where we felt that we can utilise him to bat in the middle and bat freely. And that is what he does.”He likes to take the game on, likes to play his shots. And sometimes [when] you are in trouble, you want to always take that positive route. And with Axar, we definitely can do that. He showed it in the T20 World Cup final, which was a very, very crucial knock. Again, in that game as well, we were three down and for him to come out and bat like that was superb and got us to a decent total in the end. And that is what we expect.”Axar’s left-handedness is a key reason too, breaking up an otherwise entirely right-handed top order. And beyond everything else, he simply has a superb all-round game against spin. In the period since the 2023 World Cup final, Axar has the best average strike rate of all India batters against spin through the middle overs of ODIs (minimum 90 balls faced). Of the six batters who meet that cut-off, he’s the only one with either a 40-plus average or a 90-plus strike rate.!function(){“use strict”;window.addEventListener(“message”,(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data[“datawrapper-height”]){var e=document.querySelectorAll(“iframe”);for(var t in a.data[“datawrapper-height”])for(var r=0;r<e.length;r++)if(e[r].contentWindow===a.source){var i=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";e[r].style.height=i}}}))}();

Having to let go of some of the key performers that helped them win the title, they have lost two of their first three games this season

Matt Roller31-Mar-20251:53

Rapid Fire Review – What do KKR need to learn from this defeat?

The first ten days of IPL 2025 have seen players who won the 2024 title performing brilliantly up and down the country. The only problem for the league’s defending champions is that very few of them are playing for Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR).Phil Salt has been blazing boundaries for Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB). Mitchell Starc wore the Purple Cap for a while after eight wickets in two appearances for Delhi Capitals (DC). Shreyas Iyer hit an IPL-best 97 not out in his first game as Punjab Kings (PBKS) captain. Even Nitish Rana, who played only twice last season owing to injury, crashed a match-winning 81 for Rajasthan Royals (RR).Meanwhile, a KKR side that lost three times in the whole of last year has already been beaten two times: a seven-wicket defeat at home to RCB, and now an eight-wicket thrashing at the Wankhede on Monday night against Mumbai Indians (MI). These are early days in a long season, but they have made a slow start to their title defence – as champions have tended to after mega auctions in recent times.Related

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The whole purpose of the mega auction – which saw teams permitted a maximum of six retentions from last year – is to ensure the IPL retains the competitive balance which makes it such a compelling spectacle. It is ideal for the league’s overall narrative, minimising the gap between top and bottom, but makes the notion of retaining a winning squad near-impossible.It must be hugely frustrating for successful franchises, but the combination of a strict salary cap and the unpredictability of an auction is one of the IPL’s key design features. It is not by mistake that there have been four different champions in the last five seasons, with seven teams reaching at least one final in that time. Already this season, each team has won at least once.Unsurprisingly, KKR used all six retentions after their 2024 triumph and made no secret of the fact that they would have liked to keep hold of several more. They bought another six of their title-winners back at November’s auction, with Venkatesh Iyer foremost among them and his INR 23.75 crore price tag doubtlessly inflated by the franchise’s desire to keep the core of the side together.Venkatesh Iyer has scored just nine runs in two innings so far•Associated PressCast your mind back to November’s auction in Jeddah, and you may remember Venky Mysore raising a purple paddle to place bids on all three of Salt, Shreyas and Starc. The trouble was that they had insufficient funds remaining to bring them back within the confines of the salary cap.It is clearly too soon to evaluate Venkatesh’s season, which has brought him nine runs in his first two innings. But the decision to go hard for him over several others was a significant choice at the auction, and KKR’s main changes from last year’s side – Quinton de Kock, Ajinkya Rahane and Spencer Johnson replacing Salt, Shreyas and Starc respectively – do not look like obvious upgrades.But, in fact, de Kock and Rahane are the only batters to hit fifties in their first three games this year, with another new signing, Moeen Ali, instrumental in their win over RR in Guwahati. Instead, it has been their returning players – including Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Harshit Rana and Ramandeep Singh – who have not fired at this stage of the season.Angkrish Raghuvanshi was the only bright spark with the bat for KKR•BCCI”It’s very disheartening after the mega auction because you have a set combination and then every three years the team changes,” Ramandeep said after Monday’s defeat. “But this is part and parcel of the IPL. Now teams will be trying to find their winning combinations as soon as possible and we’re trying for the same.”This was a night that KKR will try to swiftly forget: they were bowled out in under 100 balls for their lowest total since 2022. Rahane described it simply as a “collective batting failure” on what he believed was “a good wicket to bat on”, and will be looking for a response against Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) on Thursday: “We’ve got to learn really fast from this game,” he said.Loyalty is a rare trait in a T20 franchise, and generally an admirable one. The challenge for KKR was to identify the role each player had in their title win and to value them accordingly: it will become increasingly evident as this campaign unfolds whether they have kept hold of the right ingredients from their title-winning recipe.Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in 2022 and MI in 2018 were the most recent teams to start a season as defending champions immediately after a mega auction, and neither reached the playoffs. KKR will be determined to prove that is a coincidence rather than a pattern – and must overcome two heavy early-season defeats to do so.

Pick between three Tests, with each of them having thrilling moments to offer

ESPNcricinfo staff08-Jun-2025Update: This poll has ended. The AUS-IND 2021 Brisbane Test moves into the final.South Africa bend Australia to their will – WACA, 2008Australia were in transition ahead of the home summer in 2008-09, but still beat New Zealand 2-0. They found heroes when they needed one, and were doing the usual Australia things. But then the script changed in the first Test against South Africa in Perth. It took its time coming, though.From 166 for 5, it took a lower-order rescue act to lift them to 375 in the first innings. A macho fast-bowling show from Mitchell Johnson, who bagged a career-best 8 for 61, then kept South Africa to 281. With a 94-run lead – fuelled by Brad Haddin’s 94, and 30s from Simon Katich, Ricky Ponting, Andrew Symonds and Jason Krejza – now extended to 413, Australia set South Africa what looked like far too many runs to win.Enter Graeme Smith, who lost opening partner Neil McKenzie early, but then took the total to 172 in collaboration with Hashim Amla before both fell in quick succession. Smith scored 108, and Amla got 53. But there was more in the tank. Jacques Kallis (57) and AB de Villiers took South Africa to 303 before Kallis fell with the target still over 100 runs away. But de Villiers, who eventually remained not out on 106, finished the job with JP Duminy. Apart from McKenzie, all the batters who walked out, walked back with at least 50 against their name.That was Australia’s second successive loss at the WACA after India beat them there in 2007-08. And who knew at the time that it would lay the foundation for the first of three back-to-back Test series wins by South Africa in the country?

India conquer Australia’s fortress – Gabba, 2021

A closely-fought, dramatic Border-Gavaskar Trophy concluded with India pulling off one of their most memorable Test wins. That came at Australia’s fortress, and the visitors clinched the series 2-1. It was India’s maiden Test victory at the Gabba, and the first by any visiting side there in more than 32 years.What made the result remarkable was that India were without Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah, Ravindra Jadeja and R Ashwin, and their XI included five players who made their Test debuts on that tour.Australia first posted 369, with Marnus Labuschagne scoring 108. For India, Shardul Thakur, and debutants T Natarajan and Washington Sundar, picked up three wickets each. In reply, India were 186 for 6 when Shardul and Washington stitched together a stirring 123-run partnership to ensure India’s deficit was just 33 runs.Australia then made 294 in their second innings – Mohammed Siraj claimed 5 for 73, and Shardul 4 for 61 – setting India 328 to win in exactly 100 overs. It was a tall task, more so after Rohit Sharma was dismissed early on the final day. But Shubman Gill’s brisk 91 and Cheteshwar Pujara’s gritty 56 off 211 deliveries laid the foundation for Rishabh Pant, whose unbeaten 89 off just 138 balls secured a historic win with three wickets and three overs to spare in the game.

Shamar stuns Australia – Gabba, 2024

Carl Hooper and Brian Lara broke down. Even the most patriotic Australian fans cheered for the opposition. The world Test champions were stunned. It was all because one bowler with a broken toe who staged a siege at the Gabba. Australia hadn’t lost a Test to West Indies since 2003, or at home since 1997. They had never lost a pink-ball Test. All that changed in Brisbane in 2024.Australia went into the second Test having decimated West Indies in Adelaide inside three days. At the Gabba, Australia replied to the visitors’ 311 with 289 for 9 declared. West Indies fought for 193 in their second innings, setting a 216-run target.But more importantly, Shamar Joseph had retired hurt after a Mitchell Starc yorker crushed his toe. Australia lost Usman Khawaja and Marnus Labuschagne early in the chase, but Steven Smith and Cameron Green took them to stumps, with 156 more runs to win. Shamar hadn’t bowled at all on the third evening.On the fourth afternoon, Smith and Green looked comfortable. Then Shamar arrived. He conceded 19 runs off his first ten balls, but then removed Green and Travis Head. Shamar kept bowling, as he removed Mitchell Marsh, Alex Carey, Starc and Pat Cummins in a fiery spell.
All this while, Smith kept at it. But when Alzarri Joseph had Nathan Lyon with Australia still 25 runs adrift, the end was near.Fittingly, it was Shamar bowled Josh Hazlewood to seal a famous win, finishing with stunning figures of 7 for 68. It was a performance that single-handedly elevated Shamar to stardom.