The first day of the first Test of the four-match Border-Gavaskar Trophy series 2023 between India and Australia proved to be the perfect platform for Ravindra Jadeja to return to the team and spin a web of his magic.
Pat Cummins won the toss and chose to bat first on a spin-friendly Nagpur wicket. Suryakumar Yadav and KS Bharat made their Test debuts for India, while Todd Murphy made his Australia Test debut as well.
However, it was the pacers Mohammad Shami and Mohammed Siraj who got India the initial breakthroughs removing David Warner and Usman Khawaja for one run each. After that, Marnus Labuschagne and Steve Smith got together and added 82 important runs for the third wicket.
But then Ravindra Jadeja sprung into action, in what was his comeback to international cricket after 5 months out with a knee injury, for which he had to undergo surgery as well and even missed the T20 World Cup 2022.
He first got Marnus Labuschagne stumped out for 49 runs and then had Matt Renshaw out LBW for a golden duck on the very next ball.
And then he hit the jackpot, as he clean-bowled Steve Smith for 37 runs with a beauty of a delivery that didn’t turn and went straight.
IND v AUS 2023: WATCH- Ravindra Jadeja gets both big guns in Marnus Labuschagne and Steve Smith
Then a small partnership between Peter Handscomb (31) and Alex Carey (36) happened and they threatened to take Australia past the 200-run mark. But both of them were removed by R Ashwin, who also completed 450 wickets in Test cricket with the scalp of Carey.
Jadeja completed a much-deserved five-wicket haul by trapping Todd Murphy LBW for a duck on his Test debut and later Ashwin wrapped the innings up by dismissing Scott Boland and Australia managed 177 runs in their 1st innings.
For India, Ashwin took 3/42, but the star proved to be the returning Ravindra Jadeja, who picked 5/47.
The cricket fraternity rejoiced and shared their excitement on Twitter on seeing Ravindra Jadeja back in action and bowling wonderfully well.
Here are the tweets:
