For India to be carefree going into Australia for the Border Gavaskar Trophy 2024-25, with a confirmed qualification for the third cycle of the World Test Championship final in 2023-25, they needed to win five Tests, and these two games against Bangladesh and three more against New Zealand in October will be a great opportunity before them.
They came into the second Test match against the Najmul Hossain Shanto-led side with a huge 280-run victory in Chennai. But, the iffy weather and persistent rain meant that two and half days of the game were washed out, and they reached the fourth day with the visiting side facing 35 overs for 103/4.
India did a great job by bundling out Bangladesh for 233 in the first innings, as Mominul Haque celebrated a brilliant unbeaten 107-run knock, where he showed a lot of character and resilience against the quality pace attack of Jasprit Bumrah, who blew away the tail with his sheer pace.
India surpasses England with the most Test sixes in a calendar year
India started like an expressive train. The left-handed opening batter of the side, Yashasvi Jaiswal, started with four back-to-back boundaries in the opening over of the innings against Hasan Mahmud before the captain of India, Rohit Sharma, nailed the first two balls for two consecutive sixes.
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That was an indication that the team management would be planning to go hard and beyond the first innings score of the Bangladesh side. In that way, they went past the record of England’s 89 sixes in 29 innings, the most by then, which they nailed in 2022, the first year of the Bazball, under Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes.
India now has smashed over 90 maximums in the longest format in 2024 in just 14 innings. Their team score went past the hundred mark in just 10.1 overs, the fastest of a men’s red-ball game. They broke their record of 2.1 overs, which they claimed in 2023 against West Indies in Port of Spain.
They also recorded the fastest fifty of the team’s score in men’s Tests, smashing out England’s record in 4.2 overs against the Kraig Braithwaite-led side earlier this year in Trent Bridge and Edgbaston. The 55-run opening stand between Rohit and Jaiswal came at a run-rate of 14.34, the fastest, going past Ben Stokes and Ben Duckett.
Rohit Sharma also joins Sachin Tendulkar and Umesh Yadav to become the third batter from India to smash two consecutive sixes off the very first two deliveries in the five-day format of the game.
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In the case of the most sixes in the format in this ongoing year, India is leading the chart, followed by England (60) and New Zealand (51). India still has three red-ball games against the Blackcaps before four more against Australia for the rest of 2024, which provides them all the chances to get over the 100-mark.
All the batters kept on smashing the ball around the park from the start. Jaiswal collected 72 runs in 51 balls, while KL Rahul smashed 68 runs in 43 balls at a strike rate of nearly 160 before declaring on 285/9 in 34.4 overs in the first innings of the game, with a lead of 52 runs.