Former India captain Sunil Gavaskar said 2023 was a fabulous year for Indian cricket. He added that the women’s team’s successive Test wins against England and Australia and the men’s team’s great run until the final of the ODI World Cup as well. However, the Women in Blue faced a narrow defeat to Australia in the semifinals of the T20 World Cup. However, they bounced back to win the gold medal in the Asian Games before registering back-to-back Test wins against England and Australia at home as well.
The Men’s team won the Asia Cup and the Asian Games gold medal. However, they couldn’t end their more than 10-year-long wait for an ICC trophy, as they faced a defeat to Australia in both the World Test Championship and ODI World Cup finals as well.
On the Star Sports show ‘Follow the Blues’, Gavaskar said: “I think it’s been a fantastic year for both the men’s and the women’s team, particularly the way the women’s team has performed.”Those two Test wins towards the year-end, one against England and one against Australia, both teams against whom the Indian women’s team have had tough times earlier on.”
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The former India captain added: “That’s been the most exciting aspect of cricket apart from, of course, what we saw in the World Cup. The 10 straight wins, and, then, just that one bad day, which sadly happened to be the finals of the World Cup. So really some exciting times in 2023.”
Gavaskar noted that the Indian women’s team broke a barrier by beating formidable England and Australia in Test matches. He added that the twin wins raise expectations of Harmanpreet Kaur and Co. beating their two nemeses more consistently.
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However, Irfan Pathan termed 2023 as an amazing year for Indian cricket as well. He also picked Virat Kohli and Shubman Gill as some of the positives last year as well.
“I think it was an amazing year, the way they won matches. In ODIs, they had the highest win percentage in Indian cricket history. I think it was one of the best years of Indian cricket. The World Cup victory again remained slightly away from us but overall there were a lot of positives. We saw Virat Kohli’s form, which we were used to for so many years, and Shubman Gill had an amazing year,” Pathan concluded.
