5 Greatest Knocks Played By Indian Batsmen In Test Cricket
Test Cricket is the purest form of the game. It is the form of the that really 'tests' a player’s character- a batsman’s ability to play the waiting game, a bowlers ability to toil all day long, a Captain’s ability to persist with his tactics.
India has produced several great players in Test Cricket who have gone on to enthrall and bewitch the cricketing world. Sunil Gavaskar was the first big Superstar that Indian cricket produced. The ‘Little Master’ was India’s only hope during his time, as he faced up to the fearsome pace quartet of the West Indies and thrived.
Then, came the age of the iconic Sachin Tendulkar. There has been no cricketer in the history of the game, who has been venerated as much as Tendulkar was, during the course of his unprecedented career that lasted almost a quarter of a century.
The age of Tendulkar also saw a host of other great batsmen, including the likes of Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, VVS Laxman, and Virender Sehwag. These five men were the pillars of the Indian batting line up during the entire first decade of the new millennium.
After the retirement of Tendulkar, Virat Kohli has taken the legacy of the master forward. The current Indian skipper has pulverised bowling attacks all over the world and has emerged as the monarch of all that he has surveyed. He is now the fulcrum of the Indian batting line up.
In this article, let us look at five of the greatest knocks played by Indian batsmen in Test match cricket.
#5.Virat Kohli- 141 Vs Australia (Adelaide 2014)
India were taking on Australia in their back yard and were set a daunting 364 to win the match. Most teams would have tried to play it safe, but Kohli was a man of a different breed.
He and the Indian batsmen went after the target, and in the process, Kohli carved out possibly the greatest innings ever played by an Indian batsman in the fourth innings of a Test match. The dangerous Mitchell Johnson was driven with grace, Nathan Lyon was cut and pulled to the boundary. The Aussies even made Steven Smith roll his arm over but to no avail. Kohli dismantled the Australian bowling attack in his own inimitable way.
But just when India were gaining the upper hand, their skipper perished, out for a magnificent 149. And with the dismissal of Kohli, the hopes evaporated as well, as India went on to lose the match by 48 runs.
The loss brought back the memories of the 136 that Tendulkar had conjured in Chennai in the year 1998, against Pakistan, where India fell like a pack of cards after the master’s dismissal.
The same pattern repeated here, seventeen year later, with Kohli as the protagonist. And with this knock, Kohli achieved the rare feat of scoring two hundreds in the same test, an achievement that had eluded even the legendary Sachin Tendulkar.