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India registered a thumping win by innings and 132 runs against Australia in the first Test played at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium in Nagpur to take a 1-0 lead in the four-match Border-Gavaskar series.
Despite the convincing victory Indian captain Rohit Sharma is not taking Australia lightly and he expects them to come hard at them in the next Test match. "Australia are always a good team. A lot of guys who played in that series are not there for Australia also. Australia love playing Test cricket and they take pride in representing the country and so we are quite aware of them bouncing back and what they can do as a team as well," said India captain Rohit Sharma in the post-match press conference. India took a lead of 223 runs in the first innings after being bowled out for 400 but the visitors buckled under pressure and were bundled out for 91 runs succumbing to Indian spinners Ravichandran Ashwin who picked eight wickets in match three in the first innings and five in second. Ravindra Jadeja picked five in the first innings and two in the second innings. "We were prepared for hard days of bowling, spent session after session. I did not expect they would be bowled out in one session. As you saw, the pitch became slower and slower and there was no bounce on the pitch, so it was a bit of a surprise for me," said Rohit Sharma. A 4-0, 3-0 or 3-1 series win will help India qualify for World Test Championship 2021-23 final and for that captain Rohit Sharma does not want to lose any focus. India will now play the second Test match at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in New Delhi. "We want to play the cricket we are playing and we would continue to do that in the three games that we have. As captain, I need to focus on what we have in Delhi and then move on from there," explained Rohit. There were a lot of talks about the pitch in the Australian media but all this hardly mattered to the Indian captain and for him, there were no demons on the pitch. "I don't know the mental status of the Australian team. I can vouch for our team and we are the ones who want to play on pitches like these and not just from now, we have been playing on pitches like these for the last 3-4 years. Because we have all grown up playing on pitches like these, so there is no talk about pitches anymore in the changing room," the skipper said. India's convincing win in less than three days against World No.1 Test side will do their confidence a world of good. In this way they have inched closer to World Test Championship 2021-23 final which will be played in June this year. (ANI)
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