India’s carrom-baller, spin wizard Ashwin bids adieu to international cricket
India's decorated off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin announced his decision to retire from international cricket moments after the Brisbane Test ended in a draw.
In a recent statement, New Zealand speedster Trent Boult has revealed stated that controlling Indian skipper Virat Kohli’s scoring areas and not allowing him to score as freely as he would have liked helped them prevent Run-machine Kohli from leaving a significant impact in the match as a batsman.
Notably, Virat Kohli managed to score a total of 21 runs in the ongoing first Test at Wellington. While he scored just 2 in the first innings, he managed 19 in the second before getting out to Boult.
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“Almost every time we miss, he hits and he hits it well and gets boundaries. From our point of view, we are just trying to dry the boundaries for him. I think using the wicket and using the short ball was a good plan and being able to control his run rate. It’s nice to draw the air out of him,” said Boult in a press conference after stumps on Day 3 as quoted by news agency IANS.
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Other than the big wicket of Kohli, Boult also managed to get the wickets of Prithvi Shaw and India’s Test specialist Cheteshwar Pujara. Other than his vital contribution with the ball, he added 38 runs off 24 balls with the bat and helped his team take a healthy 183 run lead in the first innings.
“I hope I don’t have to bat again,” Boult stated with a smile on his face.
“If I do my job we won’t be chasing too much. It’s a very good wicket (and) we know that we have to be on the ball,” he added.
“We can’t be walking around feeling we’re well ahead of the game because there is a lot of cricket to be played,” he concluded.
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