IND vs AUS 2023: Partnership between Axar Patel and Ravichandran Ashwin was game-changing – Rahul Dravid

India’s head coach Rahul Dravid picked the partnership between Axar Patel and Ravichandran Ashwin as the game-changing moment after India won the second Test match by six wickets against Australia at the Arun Jaitley Stadium, Delhi on Sunday.

India was under the pump at 139-7 in the first innings after Australia had posted 263 runs on the board and it looked like the visitors will easily get a lead of around 80 runs. However, India was able to bounce back into the contest as Patel and Ashwin added 114 runs for the eighth-wicket alliance, which is the highest of the partnership so far.

Patel continued his good form to score a fine knock of 74 runs whereas Ashwin contributed 37. Thus, India posted 262 runs and fell short of Australia’s total by only one run.

Australia once again was able to put their noses in front after they raced to 61-1 at the end of the second day’s play. However, Ravindra Jadeja (7-42) ran through Australia’s batting to bundle out the visitors for only 113 runs. Subsequently, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Cheteshwar Pujara, and KS Bharat all contributed with the bat to help India chase down the score of 115 runs.

Rahul Dravid said while talking to Star Sports, “This Test match moved up and down, but today morning it moved really quickly for us. I think it was the partnership between Axar and Ashwin that changed things. We wanted to chase something close to 200-225 and that partnership enabled us to get back, or we’d have been trailing. A bit of a downer to concede too many runs in the evening, I think we bowled probably wrong and were all over the place, and they came hard at us, but we course-corrected this morning. It was just brilliant then how the game moved.”

On the other hand, Dravid also showered praise on Rohit Sharma’s captaincy. Rohit has led from the front in these two Test matches and he has been spot-on with his field placements and bowling changes.

Dravid said, “I think he has been brilliant. He has the respect of the dressing room. He is one of those guys who has been there a long time. The kind of person who doesn’t speak a lot, but when he does they all listen. He deeply cares a lot about the dressing room and the players. We are very lucky to have Rohit take over the leadership from someone like Virat.”

The third Test match will be played at the Holkar Cricket Stadium, Indore from 1st March.