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India pacer Mohammed Siraj is confident spinner Ravichandran Ashwin will prove to be more than a handful for the West Indies batters on the final day of the second Test here on Monday and help the visitors make a clean sweep of the two-match series. India, after setting a 365-run target for the hosts to level the series, had West Indies struggling at 76/2 at stumps on day four with veteran spinner Ashwin taking both the wickets on Sunday. The Caribbean side still has to score 289 runs to achieve an improbable win on Monday with the wicket assisting spinners. "The way the wicket is behaving, Ashwin, I feel, will run through the West Indies batting... the ball is turning," said Siraj at the end of day's play after India declared their innings at 181/2 and then got rid of the dangerous West Indies skipper Kraigg Brathwaite and Kirk McKenzie to leave the hosts in a spot of bother. Siraj also disclosed that it was India's strategy to bat aggressively in the second innings and set a big
India have the upper hand in the ongoing second and final Test against the West Indies at the Queen's Park Oval, thanks to Virat Kohli's knock of 121. Meanwhile, the 34-year-old Indian also impressed off the field when he met Caribbean wicketkeeper Joshua Da Silva's mother, with the Trinidadian revealing that the meeting made his mom's "day & year". In a video posted on social media by the BCCI, Da Silva said that his mother arrived at the venue to meet the Indian talisman rather than her son. "My mom told me two days before the Test match that she will come to see Virat Kohli, not me. That was kind of funny. It just so happened that he was on the bus. "So, I went and knocked on the window. He came out and met my mom, made her day, made her year probably," he said in the video, where it is shown that Kohli shares a smile with Da Silva's mother, while the latter is also seen hugging him and is visibly excited to meet him in person. As for the second Test, India batted well and ...
Ravichandran Ashwin produced a peach of a delivery while Mohammed Siraj made the old ball talk as a defensive West Indies crawled their way to 229 for 5 against India on a rain-hit third day of the second Test, here on Saturday. Only 67 overs were possible on the third day with West Indies batters looking for a draw, adding just 143 runs. They are still 209 runs behind India's first innings score of 438. However, there was no let-up in intensity in Indian bowling as Ashwin bowled the 'ball of the series' and Siraj delivered a perfect in-cutter to clean up Joshua Da Silva just at the stroke of rain-break to end the day on an even keel on the flattest of decks. West Indies skipper Kraigg Brathwaite (75 off 235 balls) used his enormous powers of concentration to frustrate the Indian attack on an insipid track before world's No. 1 Test bowler held the centre stage with a magical moment that brought the smiles back in Indian camp. The track on offer here is a poor advertisement for Tes
Wicket-keeper batter Sanju Samson on Friday replaced an indisposed KL Rahul in India's T20I squad for the ongoing series against the West Indies, the BCCI said. "KL Rahul was earlier named in the squad and his participation in the T20I series was subject to fitness. The batter tested positive for COVID-19 last week and has been advised rest by the BCCI medical team," BCCI secretary Jay Shah said in a statement. Sanju Samson was part of the squad in the recently concluded ODI series that the team won 3-0 and scored a half-century in the second game. India's squad for 5 T20Is: Rohit Sharma (Captain), Ishan Kishan, Sanju Samson, Suryakumar Yadav, Deepak Hooda, Shreyas Iyer, Dinesh Karthik, Rishabh Pant, Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, R Ashwin, Ravi Bishnoi, Kuldeep Yadav, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Avesh Khan, Harshal Patel, Arshdeep Singh.