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Steve Smith on loss against India
India won a hard-fought contest against Australia at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, Chennai on Sunday. Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav, and Ravichandran Ashwin spun the web around the Australian batters and restricted them to just 199 runs on a slow-paced wicket. Except for Steve Smith and David Warner, no other batters could have an answer to the spin trio of India. Smith scored the highest with 46 runs and Warner on the other hand scored 41 runs, before being dismissed by Kuldeep. The rest of the batters struggled to score runs and they lost 8 wickets for 89 runs.
In response, Australian pacers Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazelwood created havoc in Chennai. Starc picked the wicket of Ishan Kishan in the very first over of the second inning. While Hazelwood gave the Men in Blue a double blow in the same over sending back Rohit Sharma and Shreyas Iyer without scoring.
Virat Kohli and KL Rahul stabilised the innings when India was struggling at 2/3. Both the batters scored half-centuries, and Rahul remained unbeaten at 97 runs and finished the match with a six. Steve Smith after the match had a blunt take on the Indian spinner after their loss against India.
All their spinners bowled really nicely: Steve Smith
Smith said, "All their spinners bowled really nicely. Obviously, they had the wicket to suit as well," Smith said in the mixed zone. "It was challenging against the spin since they are all very quality spinners. They really worked well together, and we struggled to get on top of them."
The Aussie batter on Virat's and Rahul's inning, "It was game on. Unfortunately, we couldn't take it. Virat and Rahul played with a lot of composure. They played really smart cricket. It wasn't a kind of wicket where you could just muscle it and hit boundaries everywhere. Since they were chasing only 200, they could take a bit more time, just play themselves in, which they probably needed to after being three down early on and build a partnership that they did really well."