Washington Sundar has lauded praise for his team-mate Nitish Reddy for his brilliant performance with the bat during the post-match conference of day 03 of the Border Gavaskar Test in Melbourne.
Despite struggling with 221/7, India made a stunning comeback with Sundar and Reddy’s 127-run partnership helping the team fight back and ended the day with 358/9.
Sundar contributed a valuable half-century off 162 balls before being dismissed by Nathan Lyon. It emphasized the team’s resilience and fighting spirit, which has been instilled in them by senior players like Rohit Sharma and Gautam Gambhir, as well as the support staff.
“One thing, especially with Rohit Bhai and Gauti Bhai and all the support staff, they keep telling us to fight no matter what, and I think that’s something that has been instilled in us, in all of us, no matter what situation we are in, we will just fight no matter what.” said Sundar.
Reddy’s performance was a crucial for India which helped contention as they trail Australia by 116 runs with just one wicket remaining.
Scenes with tense when Nitish Kumar Reddy was stuck on 99 for what seemed like an eternity, but the crowd roared when his moment finally came. #AUSvIND https://t.co/Xp7esUWYpD
— cricket.com.au (@cricketcomau) December 28, 2024
“I think the day was definitely good today, very, very happy for Nitish, got an unbelievable 100 honestly, I’m sure this will be remembered forever,” said Sundar acknowledging the importance of Reddy’s achievement.
Australia batted first and made scores of 311/6 by the end of day 01. Earlier on day 02, Australia went on to score 474 runs with Steven Smith scoring 140. They were able to post a huge total with half-centuries from Sam Konstas, Usman Khawaja and Labuschagne.
Pat Cummins scored 49 runs at the low order to strengthen their score. Indian bowlers worked on a challenging surface, with Bumrah picking 4/99, Jadeja had a return of 3/78 and Akash Deep picking 2/94 runs.
After KL Rahul’s dismissal for 24 runs by cummins, India struggled once again with top order woes. However, Kohli-Jaiswal Partnership recovered India, but did not last long.
Virat Kohli and Yashasvi Jaiswal stitched a solid partnership to recover India after the loss of Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul.
They made a 100 run partnership before being dismissed for 82 and 36 runs respectively. After their dismissal Akash Deep sent out on a duck with Rishabh Pant and Ravindra Jadeja at crease by the end of day 02.
With Bumrah’s dismissal by Cummins on a duck, India is down to last one wicket with Nitish Reddy and Mohammed Siraj at crease. India scored 358/9 by the end of day 03 at Stumps.
