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ICC World Test Championship Final: Day 3 Report- The mighty Australians asserted their dominance over India in the ICC World Test Championship Final. Australia now have a massive lead of 296 runs and the Aussies have scored 123 runs for the loss of 4 wickets at Stumps on Day 3. Marnus Labuschagne played a decent knock of 41 runs in 118 balls and struck 4 fours and displayed immense mental application on a treacherous surface.
WTC Final: India vs Australia – Day 3 Session 1
Aussies got the key wicket of KS Bharat earlier on in the innings as the rising pacer Scott Boland castled the wicket-keeper batter. Shardul Thakur coped with a lot of blows on his right forearm as the pacer Pat Cummins was spot on with his line & length.
Ajinkya Rahane along with Shardul Thakur stitched an invaluable partnership of 109 runs and took the team out of the muddle as at one stage India were reduced to 152-6. Skipper Pat Cummins didn’t panic even when India scored 109 runs in the morning session for the loss of 1 wicket.
Australia’s players dropped catches and the skipper Pat Cummins also overstepped while taking the wicket of Shardul Thakur which hurt the team a lot. Surprisingly, Nathan Lyon wasn’t introduced into the attack despite the rough being present.
WTC Final: India vs Australia – Day 3 Session 2
The Pat Cummins-led side looked a different unit in the afternoon session as they took 4 wickets for 36 runs and bundled out India for 296 runs. The star batter Ajinkya Rahane would be slightly disappointed as he missed out on a well-deserving ton.
Shardul Thakur played a fine knock of 51 runs in 109 balls and struck 6 fours. Skipper Pat Cummins was the pick of the bowlers who took 3 scalps and gave away 83 runs in his 20 overs and would be happy as earlier he had taken 2 wickets on his no balls which cost the team a lot.
Australia lost 1 key wicket of David Warner in the tricky phase of 11 overs and Aussies scored 23 runs for the loss of 1 wicket. Usman Khawaja slowly was getting into the groove as the pitch started to misbehave.
WTC Final: India vs Australia – Day 3 Session 3
The Aussies had a pretty decent evening session as they scored 100 runs and lost 3 wickets. Astoundingly, the left-arm off-spinner Ravindra Jadeja took 2 scalps and gave away only 25 runs in his 9-over spell and bowled 3 maidens. Mohammed Shami couldn’t get the rewards for his fantastic spell of 10 overs as he conceded 17 runs.
The Aussies targeted Mohammed Siraj as he conceded 41 runs in his 12 overs and took 1 wicket. The Men in Blue would be aiming to restrict Australia below 350 runs which looks quite a tough task because chasing 400 won’t be easy on this sluggish surface.
WTC Final: India vs Australia – Day 3 Scorecard
India won the toss and elected to bowl first.
Australia: 469/10 (121.3 overs)
Travis Head 163 (174), Steve Smith 121 (268)
Mohammed Siraj 4-108-28.3-4, Shardul Thakur 2-83-23-4
India : 296/10 (69.4 overs)
Ajinkya Rahane 89 (129), Shardul Thakur 51 (109)
Pat Cummins 3-83-20-2, Cameron Green 2-44-12-1
Australia: 123/4 (44 overs)
Marnus Labuschagne 41 (118), Steve Smith 34 (47)
Ravindra Jadeja 2-25-9-3, Umesh Yadav 1-21-7-1
Virat Kohli | Rohit Sharma | Rishabh Pant | KL Rahul | Suryakumar Yadav | Sanju Samson | Shreyas Iyer | Yuzvendra Chahal | Jasprit Bumrah
