India vs Australia | We made the India work harder than they expected, asserts Tim Paine
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Australian Cricket team skipper Tim Paine has stated that his team made it difficult for the Indian team to defeat the hosts and made the visitors work harder than they expected. In a historic victory for the visitors, India defeated Australia in the first Test match of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
One of the reasons why the Test match cricket is still alive is a match like the one concluded today between Australia and India. In a thrilling match played at the Adelaide Oval, India defeated Australia by 31 runs to pick a narrow victory. Though India won the match, Tim Paine claimed that his men made sure that the visitors did not win the match easily and forced them to earn the victory.
"If you want to be a good team you have got to be hard to beat and today we were hard to beat, we made India work really hard, I think we made them work harder than they thought they were going to have to work.
"It won't be any more difficult than this is. Every Test match is a huge challenge and we've expected this series to be an absolute arm-wrestle from the
But Paine also expressed anguish at the missed opportunities his team let go away easily. Five days ago, on the day one of the Test
"There were a number of reasons why we lost. I thought we could have cleaned them up on day one for 200-210 and we let that slip a little bit."
"Sitting back now it is a huge opportunity because we didn't cash in in the first innings and didn't have batters out there today when they were tiring. Had we taken either of those chances, we would have won this Test match, so it's pretty hard to take."
All the forty wickets on offer in a Test match were picked by both the teams combined in the first Test. Paine asserted that all the four of his frontline bowlers gave their best, hence there is no question about the commitment from the Australian bowlers.
"You can't question those four guys' commitment they have a red-hot crack every ball. They are some of our more experienced players and the more they do that it is going to rub off on the rest.
On the fifth day today Australia almost gave a scare to the Indian team when almost every
"I don't think many people thought we'd get as close as we did today. They didn't think we'd win but we have a lot of faith particularly in our lower order. We bat pretty deep and Nathan Lyon is getting better all the time.
