IND vs AUS Live Score Updates 4th Test Day 2: Usman Khawaja ...

India vs Australia Live Scorecard, 4th Test Day 2: Starc prods forward to defend but Ashwin gets one to go straight on from round the wicket. Starc's prods forward to defend and the is taken well at short leg by Shreyas Iyer. (Express Photo by Nirmal Harindran)

IND vs AUS 4th Test Day 2 Live Updates: Usman Khawaja (150) and Cameron Green (95) powered Australia to an even stronger position in the Ahmedabad Test, stitching together 92 runs in the first session on Day 2 with Australia finishing at 347/4 at Lunch

India vs Australia 4th Test Day 2 Live Score Streaming Online Match Today: Here are the two squads

India Squad: Rohit Sharma(c), Shubman Gill, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Srikar Bharat(w), Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Ravichandran Ashwin, Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Siraj, KL Rahul, Mohammed Shami, Ishan Kishan, Jaydev Unadkat, Suryakumar Yadav, Kuldeep Yadav

Australia Squad: Travis Head, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Steven Smith(c), Peter Handscomb, Cameron Green, Alex Carey(w), Mitchell Starc, Nathan Lyon, Todd Murphy, Matthew Kuhnemann, Scott Boland, Matt Renshaw, Mitchell Swepson, Lance Morris

India vs Australia Live Scorecard, 4th Test Day 2: Australia's Usman Khawaja scored a fine hundred during the first day of the fourth cricket Test match between India and Australia in Ahmedabad. (AP Photo)

Unable to warm up with a few deliveries, and with barely any time to measure and mark their run-ups, due to the pre-game programme of the prime ministers, the Indian fast bowlers looked a touch out of sorts with the new ball. A touch rushed. Some of the Australians too “were rattled” about the lack of warm-ups, opener Usman Khawaja would later say. He certainly wasn’t.

“Coaches told me this is going to be the best warm-up of your life. I have no superstitions, no structure, I am go-with-the-flow kind of a guy.”

All through the day, Khawaja flowed in his own bubble, wrapping himself in a time-warp, to play a retro patient knock from an earlier Australian vintage, say as an Allan Border would. Behind the cool attitude, however, there is certainly a festering sense of angst at how he was treated by the Australian cricketing fraternity. This is not the racist ‘f*****g curry muncher’ taunts as a kid that he faced, but as a professional player for Australia. On and off the field.

They questioned his game against spin so much that he says he started to believe them. “A self-fulfilling prophecy. Throughout the middle of my career, I got told I couldn’t play spin and that’s why I never got an opportunity to play in India. Anytime I got to spin people were like ‘you can’t play spin’. I probably started believing it myself. I didn’t really get support from the people around me at the time. Didn’t feel like the team really supported me, didn’t feel like the coaching staff and selectors really supported me through that journey. It just made it so hard. Whether I was or wasn’t, yes I’m a better player of spin now, no doubt about that, I have more shots, and better defence. Fortunately enough I’m quite stubborn ..” For two tours to India, he didn’t play a Test. “I carried drinks for all the eight games.” [Writes Sriram Veera]

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First published on: 10-03-2023 at 07:15 IST