Stepping out of the crease and sweeping their way out of trouble have been most successful Australian ‘mantras’ in the sub-continent. On Thursday it was no different for centurion Cameron Bancroft.
“I had my plans to do both,” Bancroft said. “I have worked a lot on it and it helped me get on top of the bowler.”
“When we came down in June with the academy side, Sri (Sridharan Sriram, batting consultant) had a few sessions with us and he has been awesome. He helped me be comfortable with the ball spinning past your bat. Mathew Hayden helped me last year too. I learnt a lot talking to him about sweeping. So these were little ideas from different people that worked.”
Bancroft also said that the way Indians batted on Wednesday held out a few lessons for them. “After having watched the Indians go through their game we thought we had to come out positive. You are going to go through ups and downs on such wickets. So we had to be confident and we certainly realised that after watching India bat.”
For India’s B. Aparajith it was a joyous occasion of having scalped a five-wicket haul in front of his home crowd. “Very happy,” Aparajith said. “I got a bit lucky at the start with the first wicket (Marcus Stoinis). But I was really happy with the way I bowled after that.”
Asked if the haul came a little too late in the innings, the 21-year-old was non-committal. “If it had come a bit earlier I would have been happier. But we had to be patient. We could not have run through them in one session. And we didn’t bat to our potential yesterday.”
“We bowled well actually. But at one stage we gave too many boundaries. I was partly to blame too. But credit to their batsmen.”
