After a hustle and tussle of three days in Kolkata’s Eden Gardens, both India and Sri Lanka shook hands for a draw. Against the flow of wind, Sri Lanka dragged India onto the met on the opening day of the game and kept their nose ahead till the fourth day. However, a great Indian fight back on the final day’s play spiced this Test match up nicely but some bad lights were not ready to see India victorious.
On day five, first Virat Kohli made a merry with Eden’s pitch and notched up his 18th Test ton as India set a target of 231 for Sri Lanka to achieve in 30 odd possible overs. Then, it was Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Mohammad Shami’s duo, which came out to achieve what would have been a memorable win for India. Both blew Lankan batting order like nine pins and reduced them to 75/7 but umpires were not too happy with the natural light and call it a day.
Shami was rhythmic and furious during his 2 wickets where he troubled the visitors a lot. But it was Bhuvi, who was wrecker in chief for India as he followed his first innings’ four-fer with yet another four-wicket haul in the second innings. He registered figures of 4/88 and 4/8 respectively in this closely fought contest.
The Eden Gardens is the Mecca of cricket in India and often we call it India’s Lord’s. Several former cricketers had a love tale with this stadium like VVS Laxman, Mohammad Azharuddin and so does the current players. Rohit Sharma’s love story with Eden is well known, but now another Indian is brewing love affair with this ground. I hope you have guessed it by now that I am talking about Bhuvneshwar Kumar. Yes, he has been sensational on this very ground in recent times and contributed to India’s win.
The previous year, New Zealand played a Test match here in October, where Bhuvi took a fifer. Today was no exception as he bowled a breathtaking fast bowling spell in last hours of this match. Earlier this year, Australia and India were involved in a low-scoring thriller here and the 27-year-old delivered an economical spell of 6.1-2-9-3, which led India to defend a 253-run target.
In his both previous attempts, Bhuvi couldn’t manage to grab man of the match award, but his today’s heroics were enough to be named MOM. He said in the post-match presentation “It was difficult to bowl in the second innings because the ball was coming onto the bat. There was reverse swing, so looked to make the most out of it. When I made my debut, I was dependant on swing. There were areas I wanted to improve and those things are paying off. When we went in, Virat said – just imagine if you were playing in the same situation, it’s never easy. So we went in with that mindset.”
However, India missed to gain the 1-0 lead in the three-match Test series by a fraction margin but has gained a lot of confidence ahead of a big South Africa tour, where teams will play 3 Tests, 6 ODIs, and 3 T20Is. Also, Indian seamers have shown that gone are the days when Indian fast bowling was toothless.
