IND vs AUS: Indian batsmen know about Josh Hazlewood’s skills but they still fail to counter him | Cricket News
Josh Hazlewood’s first over of the evening in Melbourne was like the classical intro of a horror movie. It gave the audience, and Shubman Gill, the chills and shivers. The first ball slithered wickedly onto his pads in front of his stump, the umpire promptly raised his index finger, only for Gill’s half-hearted review judging the ball to sail over the leg-stump. The next ball bent away to the bemusement of Gill’s quivering bat. The next ball cracked his helmet, the batsman late into a hesitant pull. Gill was living a nightmare in the grandest cricketing theatre in the world. Nearly a lakh spectators stood frozen in the horror-script masterminded by Hazlewood. The Indian batsman survived the over, but not the spell. Like a fear-stricken man in a haunted house stumbling onto an open door out of his crucible of terror, his eyes lit up at the sight of a juicy half-volley, wide and straight, the house-break ball. But in his endeavour to loft the ball, with the extension of the bat, he lost control …
