They say a team’s strength can be judged through its reserve bench. Team India has proven it, by winning The Border – Gavaskar 2020-21 series, despite the absence of Kohli, Rahul, Shami, Bumrah, Ashwin, Umesh, Vihari; A historical win at Brisbane, helped India to secure the trophy for the third consecutive time, and also for the first time India won two-test series on Australian soil consecutively, even though they lost the first match.

Gabba, Brisbane has been a fortress of the Aussies, in the last 32 years, no other teams won against Australia. To break this record, India had to score 329 runs in the second innings, on day 5. With the early dismissal of Rohit Sharma, Shubman Gill and Cheteshwar Pujara built the innings, and then Rishabh Pant played a superb inning to secure the match. The effort of Indian bowlers must be mentioned here because this strong Aussie batting line up surrendered under India’s reserve bench bowling line up, they took all 20 wickets in the match.

As the ICC Test Championship final is coming up this year, Indian management must be assured that they can challenge any team right now. And few players showed their caliber that needs to be mentioned –

1) Shubman Gill: In a debut series, most importantly in Australia, a 21-year-old boy played fearlessly, and gave India a positive start in every match. 259 runs in 3 matches with an average of 51.8, anyone would be happy with this kind of debut. His innings of 91 built the base for India’s win.

2) Washington Sundar: Brisbane test was his debut match. Without his partnership with Shardul Thakur, Indian batting could have been collapsed. Not only by the bat, but he also picked three important Aussie wickets in the first innings.

3) Shardul Thakur: Coming into the team as a replacement bowler, then playing an innings of 67 and making a 123 runs partnership with Sundar, anyone would have been proud of themselves if they played like this. He took 4 wickets in the second innings including David Warner.

4) Mohammed Siraj: Although he had his debut in the Melbourne test match in the series, but came to the field in Brisbane as the most experienced bowler in the team, with the experience of 2 tests. Captain Rahane put his belief to him with the absence of Bumrah, Shami, Ishant, and he kept it by taking the first 5 wicket haul in the second innings, this is the best bowling figure of him till now.

5) Rishabh Pant: Many legends said that Rishabh Pant has superb talent, in this series he played and proved his worth in the team. 97 at Sydney couldn’t ensure the team’s victory that time. But he remained till the end in the fifth day and played an innings of 89* to take India to victory.

India created history! And surely they will remember this series for a long time.