The much-anticipated Border Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) 2023 between India and Australia is currently taking place at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium in Nagpur on Thursday, February 9. It will be the final series for both teams in the ongoing World Test Championship (WTC) cycle, which will decide the top two teams for the upcoming final of the championship to be played on June 8 at the Oval in England as well. Meanwhile, Virat Kohli made headlines after dropping an easy catch.
However, Australia won the toss and chose to bat. The Pat Cummins-led side replaced Travis Head and Josh Hazlewood with Peter Handscomb and debutant spinner Todd Murphy. Suryakumar Yadav and wicketkeeper-batsman KS Bharat made their debuts for Team India, whereas star all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja returned to the playing XI after recovering from his injury as well.
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Meanwhile, during the 16th over of Australia’s innings, Virat Kohli dropped the easy catch given by Steve Smith off the bowling of the spinner Axar Patel. Smith played for the drive, but got a thick outside edge and went quickly to the right side of Virat Kohli. The former India captain, who was fielding at the first slip, couldn’t grab it. Steve Smith would have got out had Virat managed to take the catch as well.
Currently:
Virat Kohli is The Worst and The Most Overrated Fielder of Team India https://t.co/5ZMfrk2hMv
— Immy|| 🇮🇳 (@TotallyImro45) February 9, 2023
However, Steve Smith loves to bat in India, scoring 660 runs in six Test matches at an average of 60, which also included three centuries and a half-century. The right-handed batsman was the highest run-getter on their previous tour with 499 runs which came at an average of 71.29. Overall, Smith has an incredible record against India in the Test format, scoring 1742 runs from 14 matches with an average of 72.58.
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PLAYING XI
India: Rohit Sharma (c), KL Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Srikar Bharat (wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Axar Patel, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj
Australia: David Warner, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Steven Smith, Matt Renshaw, Peter Handscomb, Alex Carey (wk), Pat Cummins (c), Nathan Lyon, Todd Murphy, Scott Boland
