News Sports Cricket Unconquered cricket pitches of Australia and New Zealand in the year 2014

Unconquered cricket pitches of Australia and New Zealand in the year 2014

New Delhi: With World Cup only six weeks away, teams are busy playing with each other to prepare for the mega sport even to be held in Australia and New Zealand where bouncy and seaming

5)    India tour of Australia

With a hope of a turn around in their overseas performances, India toured Australia in late November. The first test at Adelaide was postponed due to unfortunate demise of Phillip Hughes.

However the story wasn't different for the visitors from any overseas tour in the past. After a brilliant century by the stand in skipper Virat Kohli in first innings of first test at Adelaide, while chasing a target of 364 runs the same story gets repeated. From 242/3 at one time they went down to 315 all out and lost the match by 48 runs.

Kohli was the lone fighter in the chase with his second century (141) of the match however Vijay was dismissed at 99.

India suffered another batting collapse in second test at Brisbane. They lost 6 wickets for 87 runs in first innings to go down to 408 from 321/4 and were bundled out for 224 in second to lose the test by 4 wickets and go 0-2 down in the 4-test series.

In the third test at Melbourne, India lost the initiative by losing 7 wickets for 56 runs. They were 409/3 at one stage and went down to 465 in first innings with twin tons from Kohli and Rahane in reply to Australia's 530. Later they managed to hold on with a draw and Australia reclaimed Border-Gavaskar trophy.

Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane and Murali Vijay were the only stand-out players for India.

There had been couple of sledging instances in the series so far. But the incident which made news was Johnson hitting Kohli with the ball.

The fourth test is to be played on January 6- 10 followed by a tri-angular series with Australia and England.