Rahul Tiwari
khelja|29-12-2024
Team India's rising all-rounder Nitish Kumar Reddy scored a memorable century in the Melbourne Test. The entire Melbourne Cricket Stadium danced on his historic century. The Indian camp also stood up and applauded Nitish. Nitish's father, who was watching the match in the stadium, had tears of joy in his eyes. However, even after scoring a century, Nitish Reddy is unhappy. Actually he is worried about his bowling. He was included in the team as an all-rounder but he has failed to show his strength in bowling. After scoring the century, he also said that he was not very happy with his bowling.
After scoring a century in the Melbourne Test, Nitish Reddy said, 'My hope was to become a good all-rounder. I am still not happy with my bowling because I want to fill that all-rounder's shoes. Reddy has bowled only 35 overs so far in this series and has not been able to make much impact. He has got only 3 wickets in these 35 overs. However, on some occasions he troubled the batsmen a bit but still it proved to be less than the needs of the team and the expectations of Nitish himself.
As far as the century is concerned, Nitish called it the best innings of his career so far. He said, 'This is the best innings of my career. The noise of the audience was amazing after the good defense by Mohammad Siraj. Even on my century there was not so much noise.
On his century, Nitish clearly said that this is the result of his hard work in the last two-three years. The Indian all-rounder said, 'It is not a matter of the last one month but it is the result of the hard work of the last 2-3 years that the century was made. I have worked hard during the off-season the last few years. So, for you guys it is one month, but for me it is the hard work of the last 3 years.
In the first innings of Melbourne Test, Australia scored 474 runs with the help of Steve Smith's century. Jasprit Bumrah took 4 wickets and Ravindra Jadeja took three wickets. Team India's first innings was limited to 369 runs thanks to a century by Nitish Reddy. By the end of the fourth day's play, Australia had scored 228 runs after losing 9 wickets in the second innings. He had a lead of 105 runs in the first innings. On this basis he is ahead by 333 runs. Indian team is certain to get a target of 334 or more to win. If Team India chases this target then it will be the most successful run chase at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. In 1928, England's most successful run chase of 332 runs on this ground was against Australia.