Played one of my best innings in test against AUS getting 282 in a wearing pitch on legend.
Went in to the 3 test series 0-1, having score 70 and 30 odd in that lost match. Put in to bat was looking to stick around and get a good total in first innigns, facing the pace trio of mitch, harris and pattinson played cautiously and prodded along to 95 when i got out to a stupid ondrive to a watson angled across outswinger, felt really frustrated at having thrown it away after all the hardwork.
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Still kohli got a century and put the team to a respectable 434, but aus made short work of it with three of their batsman scoring century and getting to 565.
IND started second innings well with century opening stand between vijay and dhawan, when vijay got out and i walked in 3rd session of 3rd day with the series lingering on this innings, after having got out after all the hardwork in first innings i was determined to smash it around this time and started well, when Dhawan got runout and i was joined by Kohli, for once i started hitting it over Harris Johnson or pattinson without much regard and made a quick fire 50 [32] balls.
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then Harris pegged back control of the match with quick wickets of Kohli and Rahanae, even as i smashed my way to a hundred of 67 balls
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Then Dhoni played a nonsense shot of the penultimate ball of the day pulling to midwicket. AS the match resumed on Day4 i settled into a more responsible role of trying to last as much as possible and score runs as our lead was still very negligible.
Lyon took Jadeja early in the day with a pass ball tactic between him and the short leg fielder.(this needs to be reduced)
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then i got to 150 then at 162 got trapped to a curveball low full toss of lyon and thought i was goner but decided to take a chance with DRS and survived.
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by now ashwin and me had settled into a partnership, clarke got desperate and reviewed one going totally away form me for LBW and lost the review.
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Lyon struck again getting Ashwin one short of his fifty and Bhuvi just before lunch.
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after lunch i resumed hitting mixing caution with aggression covering ishant from strike bowlers as new ball was taken. then finally got to my double.
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from then on Ishy and me just kept ticking along as we saw through the second session of Day -4 without further damage with me on 252 and Ishy on 60s , I entered into the third session looking to blast some runs get a 300 if possible and put Aus in by the end of the day.
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The pitch visibly started slowing down when i was around 260 odd, at first i thought it was bowler fatigue but then saw that they were still bowling at good speeds of 140+ but the pitch was slowing down and i was missing a few shots which i was timing superbly earlier..
then i finally got out at 282 missing one due to the slowness factor of the pitch to a very marginal LBW but still felt very satisfied to play such a good innings in a crunch situation in the series pulling the team to 600+. To play for 3.5 sessions in stretch felt really good and draining (almost 3 hrs in realtime).
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Would have declared but waited for ishy to get his century, then the indian attack got through Aus batting line up on the final day to put the cheery on top of the cake and we won comfortably( was really happy to see the simulation engine working well)
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We went on to win the series in the next match comfortably though i got out in 30s in the next innings, got 90 NO to take the team to victory in the second innings. Ended the series as the highest run scorer.
One of the best test series i have had in career.
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