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India’s captain, Rohit Sharma, compared the team’s
historic Test victory in Cape Town—which came back from an innings loss in
Centurion—to the 2020–21 Gabba Test victory. This one drew the two-Test series,
and that Brisbane win completed an incredible series win in Australia.
“It’ll be one of our best Test match
victories,” Rohit said after India’s seven-wicket win in just five
sessions, the shortest Test ever played. “Having not won here in Cape Town
[before], obviously this puts it right up there with all the victories that
we’ve had. It’s very hard to compare the Test matches that you play because
every Test match has its own importance and own relevance. The Test match that
we won at The Gabba as well. The last test match that was lost by Australia in
Brisbane was in 1988, I think. Nearly after 23, 24 years [32 years] we won the
Test match there. It kind of became like their fortress. They never lose a test
match there.
“And the way we won that Test match as well was
quite important. From where we came, we were 1-nil down, we won in Melbourne
and then we drew the Test match in Sydney and then won in Brisbane. So you
can’t really rank the Test matches, but this has to be right up there because
we had not won here. That shows how important a venue this is for us to come
here and perform. I give a lot of credit to our team to put up a performance
like that and win the game.”
Rohit spoke about the importance of judging the
conditions and then sticking to their game plan. “We knew it was not gonna
be a high-scoring game,” Rohit said. “So all we wanted to do was stay
disciplined in how we bowl, not get ahead of ourselves and try and do too many
things. Once we got them all out for 55, we spoke to the batters that we needed
small contributions in this game.
“It was not gonna be an easy pitch to bat on. So
how much ever you can try and score, apply yourself, get hit on your body, it’s
fine, but just go and put yourself ahead. If you have to take a blow, be ready
for it. That’s something that we spoke of. To be honest, the top four or five
batters showed a lot of grit. We knew that the first-innings lead here was
going to be crucial.”