Hyderabad: Left-arm spinner Xavier Doherty said, on Monday, that the Australian batsmen need to take a cue from the performances of Cheteshwar Pujara and Murali Vijay in order to save the side from the ignominy of another crushing defeat in the second Test match, here.
“Watching the two Indian batsmen (Vijay and Pujara) go about it – how disciplined they were yesterday and again this morning – that’s how we’ve got to be,” Doherty said when asked about what they needed to do in order to save the second Test.
After conceding a huge 266-run first innings lead, the Australians were 74 for two in their second innings at the end of third day’s play.
“We’ve got some quality players at the crease. We need to find a way out that works and keep the good balls out. Yesterday, they (Vijay and Pujara) absorbed all the pressure we threw at them early on and scored their runs later in the day. If we do that tomorrow, it is game on, but we know there is a lot of hard work to be done tomorrow and we are well aware of that,” he added.
Doherty said it was pleasing to get the nine wickets quickly after the mammoth partnership for the second wicket.
“We came in today knowing we were up against it. We needed to put in a better effort than yesterday to eventually knock them over. Today, we took nine for 190 or something like that (9-192), which was a pleasing effort. But the damage was done yesterday, so there’s still a lot of work for us to do to get ourselves back into the game,” he said.
The 30-year-old, however, did admit that at one point of time, he felt as if he won’t get a single wicket.
“It was starting to look that way. Particularly, with that close leg before decision which I thought was pretty good. Things just didn’t seem to be going my way. In the last five or six overs, it was just more pleasing how the ball started to come out. To get a couple of wickets was nice as well,” he said. (PTI)