Josh Hazlewood has been successful in getting an edge over Virat Kohli in the encounters in the 50-over format, especially in the year 2020, wherein he has dismissed the latter on four occasions.
In the concluded 3-match ODIs that the hosts won comfortably by 2-1, the pacer had managed to dismiss Virat on all three occasions on scores of 21(21), 89(87) and 63(78).
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With the form in his stride, Hazlewood feels that he could carry the same dominance against the batting maestro in the first Test at Adelaide from December 17.
Virat Kohli would participate in just the opening Test and would head back to India. In his absence, vice-captain Ajinkya Rahane would don the captain’s role in the remaining three matches. Being a key player in India’s batting order, Virat’s wicket would be of utmost importance for Tim Paine-led Australia, considering the former holds 3 hundreds, averages over 71, and has aggregated 431 runs in 3 Tests played at Adelaide Oval.
“I have had some luck against him of late in the white-ball format. So, you take a little bit of that into the Tests. That said, it is a fresh start. It is a different story again with the pink ball.
He scored runs against us last time with the red ball and I think it is crucial to start well against him. We have only got him for two innings in the one Test in Adelaide,” said the 29-year-old to the Media on Sunday.
Cheteshwar Pujara faced a lot of balls in the previous series: Josh Hazlewood
The New South Wales cricketer pointed out how Cheteshwar Pujara’s style of play ground the Australian bowlers in the previous Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Pujara was the highest run-getter in the series, scoring 521 runs with 3 centuries and a fifty, facing over 1350 deliveries, and spent close to 30 hours at the crease.
Australia’s bowling attack was worn out completely and the Virat Kohli-led side managed to register a historic 2-1 victory in the four-match series, and by doing so, the tourists became the first Asian side to script a series win in Australian soil in the longest format of the game.
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Pujara bagged two Man of the Match awards for his astounding performances in Adelaide and Sydney, and was rightly adjudged as the ‘Player of the Series’.
The absence of the batting duo of David Warner and Steve Smith – two of Australia’s core batters in the longest format, owing to the 12-month ban in the ball-tampering scandal, proved to be another factor behind the hosts losing out the battle against the Indian bowlers.
“I think what you probably saw was the bowlers not getting enough rest in between innings and Pujara faced a lot of balls and I guess in a long series, that is the batsman’s goal, one to score runs and to win that Test and to keep that frontline attack out on the field for as long as possible and obviously get the benefits of that later in the series which is exactly what happened last time around,” said Hazlewood, who picked 13 wickets while averaging 30.61 in the last Border-Gavaskar Test series in Australia.
“We spent a lot of time in the field in Melbourne with short rest in between and then again in Sydney, so that, in a four-match or five-match series, that is a huge goal of batters to score runs in early games, to spend a lot of time in the middle, to get some miles and legs of the opposition bowlers,” he added.
The much-coveted 4-match Test series will commence from December 17 with the opening match being a day-night Test at Adelaide Oval, in Adelaide. The last three Tests would be played in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
