India’s dressing room erupted in joy after Akash Deep scored the boundary that helped the visitors avoid follow-on late on day four of the Brisbane Test at the Gabba, which took the Australian team by ‘surprise’, says off-spinner Nathan Lyon.
No. 11 Akash Deep joined Jasprit Bumrah after India lost their ninth wicket at the score of 213. The duo then stitched an unbeaten 39-run partnership before stumps on Tuesday to take India past 246 — the follow-on target.
The camera shifted its focus to the Indian dressing room in between and showed an animated Virat Kohli, captain Rohit Sharma and chief coach Gautam Gambhir doing high-fives while bursting into laughter.
Akash Deep then hit Pat Cummins for a six to show his long-handled skills, which brought Kohli to the edge of the glass window in the dressing room to see how far the shot went into the stands.
The duo came back the next day to add eight more runs, before Akash was removed by Travis Head’s part-time spin for 31 and India bowled out for 260, trailing Australia by 185 runs.
On Wednesday, while talking to Fox Cricket during a rain delay, Lyon said maybe India’s top-order batters didn’t want to come out to face the music late on day four, which is why they celebrated like that.
Lyon said the Australian team talked about it and was surprised.
“After the play we spoke about that and were surprised about some of their actions,” said the veteran off-spinner. “It looked to me like their top order didn’t want to bat last night (Tuesday) if we were able to get that and enforce the follow-on.”
It meant Australia had to bat again after India were bowled out early on day 5. The hosts went after Indian bowlers, but lost 7 wickets for 89 runs and made a challenging declaration at the point, leaving India with a target of 275 in a minimum of 56 overs left in the day.
But after India had reached 8 for no loss, rain came again to halt proceedings and the game eventually ended in a draw to keep the five-Test series level at 1-1.
“…I think we can be extremely proud about the way we’ve gone about it. We’ve really driven this game to get into the position that we find ourselves at the moment,” said Lyon.
